Adele Feeds Self for First Time!

Adele fed herself an Oreo Cookie! This is the first time she’s ever fed herself with her hand, other than holding a bottle. We are thrilled that we found something she liked well enough to motivate her to feed herself!
Thanks Nabisco, for making junk food beloved by toddlers of all abilities.

Adele is over two years old now and has a ‘placeholder’ diagnosis of Cerebral Palsy. We recently had a IEP meeting with several professionals and therapists from the Early On program. While Adele has behaviors that are similar to Autism, her social interactions, while sporadic and unpredictable, are not best explained by placing her on the autistic spectrum at this early age. She has just been tested for cognitive impairment, and is greater than 3 standard deviations below the mean, meaning she is severely cognitively impaired. Since she also has the diagnosis of a physical impairment (Cerebral Palsy), she qualifies as “Severe Multiple Impairment”, a disability category used in educational settings, which will make her eligible for additional programs. For now, Adele is best understood as being very developmentally delayed and intellectually disabled, functioning in the 6-11 month range for most behaviors and cognitive abilities.
Today, she put a cookie in her mouth for the first time, repeatedly! It’s all about finding the right thing to motivate, I guess.