18 Months!

Beep! Beep! Hooray! Beep! Beep! Hooray! John is 18 months! This is a backdated post as we were so busy with guests from Japan past few days. Looking back at John's development for the past few months, I can really see huge improvement in all his developmental domains.

Physical

• Gross Motor: Able to walk and run without support on different surfaces.
• Fine Motor: Able to hold pencil or pen and make strokes on paper. He is using Palmer grasp, but grasping the top of objects such as pen, pencil, paint brush and spoon. His need more practice for his wrist movements.
• Eye-hand Coordination: Able to insert the straw to his drinking cup minimal assistance. Able to reach out to the food/fruit he wants using fork.
• Bilateral Coordination: Able to climb up and down stairs by himself, holding the grill while climbing up stairs.

Social

• Self Feeding: Able to self feed some dishes such as short pasta (using fork or spoon), fruits (using fork), rice (using spoon, but mama scoop the rice for him). Drinking from the cup without assistance, and able to put cup nicely on the table after drinking (but he likes to play with the water sometimes).
• Able to wait for his turn sometimes, when mama said "wait" or "等等" together with stop hand sign.
• Smile when seeing other kids playing and attempt to play together or just following them.

Emotional

• Showing more temper now, get angry (scream, banging on the table, hit himself or chair) when he could not get his way.
• Laughing and smiling when watching kids programs.
• Dancing when he heard music, even with papa's grandparent's old songs!!
  

Language

Receptive: Able to understand instruction and respond accordingly.

Expressive: Pulling papa or mama to the place he want us to be, use sign language such as noding and shaking head, hand sign for "no-no" and "no more".

Intellectual

Memory Skill: Able to match sound with pictures on the book, such as oink oink (pig), apple, quack quack (duck) and chick.

Problem Solving: John demonstrated developing problem solving skills. He was unable to climb up stairs without the grill at the side, so he look around and walked up the ramp instead.

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Eating Habit - It is observed that his eating habit has changed. He used to like porridge, but has switched to stir fried noodles and rice. I have just discovered that he likes fresh cucumber now. He also likes carrot, broccoli, cabbage, etc.

***Anecdote***
18 Aug 2009, Sandy Paradise Hotel

After John had his biscuit and apple juice, I wrapped rubbish in a plastic bag and asked him to put it in the bin for me. John grabbed the plastic bag and headed straight to a rubbish bin located near the lifts. He was able to put the rubbish in the bin without my second prompt. T and I were so proud of him. In fact, I taught him to put rubbish in the bin just ONCE about a week ago and he was able to do it. Why am I so proud of him?

• His language skill is developing, in this case is receptive language skill as he was able to follow instruction correctly.
• Ability of following instruction also demonstrated his social skill is developing.
• He was able to remember what is bin and where it was located (in a new environment), this demonstrated his thinking and memory skills are developing.
• Of course, it also required physical skills to complete this task.