Ages and Stages Questionnaires

I have a love/hate relationship with milestones. When I took my son in for his first well baby check (just out of the NICU), he was a month adjusted but 4 months old. So the nurse, clueless wonder that she is, asked me if he was achieving all of these 4 month old skills. Uh, no. Preemie parents have it so hard. We have just been through this harrowing shock of early delivery of our children, literally willed them into good health and increasing weight, taken them home on a wing and a prayer, and the nurses ask about chrono age milestones? It's VERY discouraging. (Note to any pediatricians out there - change this practice. Yesterday.) When Early Intervention came for his first evaluation, he was significantly behind, at two months adjusted age, for gross motor activity. Significant enough to get PT twice a week. Well, we have been through many more EI evaluations and equally as many well baby checks and those damned milestones keep haunting me. I can look them up in the baby books. You know the part - What your baby MIGHT be doing, What your baby PROBABLY is doing, etc. Even when I used adjusted age, we missed so many of those milestones. After the 3rd well baby check, I delivered my famous (to me) line to the nurse. We went over the 9 month milestones with all "no" answers and I said, "Now, for me to feel a little bit better about things, can you ask me the 6 month milestones? Because we might have achieved SOME of those by now!" And she did. And I felt a little bit better. Well, my state has this research project going on. They are following a sample of children longitudinally, looking at development, etc. I completed the first two sets of forms but at the 12 month adjusted form, I quit. It was too much. I didn't send it it, even with repeated reminders from the researchers. You see, their forms say to do X age (in that case, 12 months) but I operate on adusted age ... and yet they send the forms at the adjusted age time period. So I get SO confused between the chrono age, the adjusted age and when all the things he's dealing with actually developed. And then there's the problem of me not wanting to feel down. I KNOW he's behind. I don't need a bunch of researchers to interpret that for me - you would be too if you spent the 1st 4 months of your life in a hospital bed. We're working on it but I just don't want to feel down. I have a lot on me on a daily basis and prefer positivity over negativity. And a long list of Ages and Stages that Natty is not meeting just is not productive to my confidence. Well, the researchers called last week. They caught me at a weak moment. Could I please fill out the 18 month forms they sent? Hell. OK. So I sat down last night and completed most of it. Not good. Some things (particularly language) are so markedly delayed ... but they don't ask the important things, like how bad were his ears before the tubes? If they knew he spent 6 months with fluid constantly in his ears, they might understand. They might get it. But no, it's just a survey and he failed miserably. Again. A parent of a normal child told me I obsess too much over milestones. Well, I daresay you would too with these experiences. If YOUR child always had a "no" behind half his milestones, you too would read ahead to start thinking about how you could improve matters. You'd target those very specific things ... and try. You would. I KNOW you would! So if I abhor milestones, you can see why. And if I pay a little too much attention to what he should be doing, you can understand that as well. The good side to it all is Early Intervention. They assess him (and he does poorly there too, always qualifying for more services) but it's people there. People who say the right things, like "Poor baby, of course you can't sit. You've had so many ear infections, I'll bet you have fluid in those ears. And it screws up your balance, doesn't it?" And then "He has such pretty eyes." They know how to talk to me, how to make me feel a tiny bit better for the missed milestones.