Standardized Assessments often don't work with SM kids

Thomas and I went to his new OT evaluation today.  He was really excited and was curious about everything in the therapy room.  I forgot to bring a prop for him, but luckily they had a ton of beanie babies and he quickly grabbed one of them.  Having a prop is a strategy we use to take the focus off him and onto the object, which works wonders.  We began to comment on how fast his beanie baby went down the slide, jumped over things, etc.  After a few minutes, Thomas began climbing on the equipment as well.  The OT and I discussed letting him warm up first and this helped a lot.

After about 15 minutes, he was very comfortable, so she decided to try her first evaluation.  She put a line of colored tape down the center of the room and asked if he could walk across it.  He completely froze.  The attention was now on him to "perform" and I could feel his anxiety.  I have learned through his therapy that a sense of expectation causes him to shut down.  He can sense it and he gets extremely nervous.  Familiar with these behaviors, the OT changed gears and set up a trampoline in line with a crash pad and pop out tunnel.  She asked if he wanted to play on them.  By this point though, he was already in shut down mode and stood like a statue.  I could tell he was dying to try it, but he was too nervouse to try in front of her.  She felt it too and decided to leave the room for a minute.  No sooner had that door closed, he was jumping on that trampoline, then onto the crashpad.  When the door opened again he stopped.

It was clear that standardized assessments were not going to work yet.  The key to this though was the OT understood this.  She didn't push it and just decided to evaluate the best she could through play as he developed a relationship and trust with her.  I started throwing beanie babies for him to catch over the crash pad and as soon as he felt the pressure was off, he was back to running all over the place.

Through lots of casual play together that was on Thomas's terms, she observed a lot of things and asked me a lot of questions.  By the end, he was comfortable enough to do a few gross motor assessments with her.  Our plan is now to have an ongoing evaluation over time, as standardized evaluation assessments in an alotted time just don't work for children like Thomas.    This is the reason why I feel our only option is an OOP provider who specializes in OT with these types of children.  This OT gets this, because she works with kids like him all the time.