3 Year Developmental Update

 

I intended to start doing updates every six months, but this one's so late, it's turned into a 3 year update instead of a 2½ year update. I'm also leaving the language specific section for a separate post.

Life Skills

Eating

2-3 Year Goals

Here's the goals she was working on for eating:

• Drinks from cup held to lips

• Feeds self with spoon

• Feeds self with fork

• Transfers materials with a spoon

• Uses utensils to eat

• Cuts with knife

• Opens packages, plastic wrappers and containers

• Gets drink from faucet

• Spreads with knife

• Closes packages, plastic wrappers and containers

She's mastered drinking from cups. She still spills quite a bit, but she can consistently get most of the liquid in her mouth. The main thing we've been doing to practice this is a fun little ritual I came up with where I make myself a hot chocolate, put a little bit of it in a smaller cup for her, and we both drink together. She's been building her spoon use this way, too, but using a spoon for non-liquids is still tough for her. She hasn't used a fork or knife much lately.

She's been getting better at opening a variety of containers. She's starting to figure out how to unscrew pop bottles, but hasn't quite managed it. She's better at opening than closing, but she's making progress with both.

When I started work on this update around 2½ years, she had mastered independently filling a cup with water and drinking from it, both at the playroom sink in my mom’s office (using a box to reach) and with the faucet in the tub at home. However, since then we’ve had to close down my mom’s office for repairs, so we no longer have access to the playroom. She's also been going back and forth on whether she knows how to use the faucet.

3-3½ Year Goals

Here's the one new goal in this area:

• Pours drinks

One of her recent Kiwico boxes came with a set for mixing food coloring that includes a pitcher and three cups. She's been regularly playing by pouring water back and forth between cups. She's still spilling a lot, and doesn't understand that cups have a limit on how much liquid can be poured into them, but she is able to get most of the liquid from cup to cup fairly consistently.

Hygiene

2-3 Year Goals

Here's the goals she was working on in this area:

• Allows nose to be wiped

• Wipes own nose on own hands or random objects

• Cooperates in washing and drying face

• Cooperates in washing and drying hands

• Holds toothbrush to teeth

• Washes and dries face 

• Dries off with a towel when wet.

• Brushes/combs hair

She's been getting more cooperative with washing her face and hands, as well as letting me wipe her nose. But she still often resists, so we're still working on this. 

She's consistently trying to brush her teeth, often very eagerly, so I'm going to mark this as mastered.

She is very eager to brush her and my hair, and often fights me for the brush when I'm brushing her hair, but she's not very effective at brushing. She will voluntarily put a towel around herself when she's cold and wet, but doesn't really dry herself, just snuggles in it.

3-3½ Year Goals

There's two new goals in this area:

• Washes hair

• Spits out toothpaste after brushing teeth

So, for a long time, washing her hair has been one of her least favorite self-care tasks. She hates getting shampoo in her eyes (even tearless), and also hates lying on her back in the water. So, usually hairwashing inevitably leads to a sobbing meltdown. It's a bit better if I get in the tub with her, but that's not always an option.

However, recently she's starting to try to wash her own hair. She's putting her hair in the stream of the tub faucet, and also trying to get the shampoo bottle open. So there's the first glimmers of progress!

I had overlooked spitting in my toothbrushing goals, but I added it because recently she tried to spit out her toothpaste after brushing for the first time. She's seen me do it many times and she's clearly learning. 

Toileting

2-3 Year Goals

Here's the goals for toileting:

• Cooperates with being placed on toilet

• Only urinates in toilet

• Only defecates in toilet

• Shows awareness of toileting accidents

• Goes to toilet unprompted to urinate or defecate

• Toilets on a scheduled time with prompt

• Wipes self

• Gets toilet paper

• Reports if she needs to go potty

So, originally I wrote a somewhat downer update about how we haven't been making much progress mostly because I've been too stressed out. But in the time I've been working on this update, my daughter has suddenly decided to take the initiative on potty training. It might partly be because I got a new potty she likes, and put it in her playroom so she can play and watch TV while using the potty. Or maybe something's just clicked. Anyway, she's started taking her diaper off and sitting on the potty, and even sometimes trying to wash it out afterwards. She's still not staying dry consistently, but she's definitely making progress!

This area has been up and down a bunch. When I first started work on this update, at 2½, she hadn't made any progress in quite awhile. Then, suddenly, she went through a phase where she was taking her diaper off and sitting on the potty, and sometimes even trying to wash it out afterwards. And then she stopped again. Currently, the only one of these she's been making progress on is wiping herself - when she's got a poopy bum, I've been getting her to help wipe, and she usually makes a good attempt. 

3-3½ Year Goals

Here's the new goals in this area:

• Flushes toilet

• Washes hands after toileting

I mentioned above that she was trying to wash out her potty. This is the goal I'm counting that under. She's also actually flushed the toilet several times, sometimes empty and sometimes after we've put the contents of a dirty diaper in it.

In addition, with the introduction of wiping, we've got to also work on washing her hands afterwards. She's pretty cooperative with it, but she doesn't initiate handwashing yet.

Dressing

2-3 Year Goals

Here's the goals for this area:

• Removes pants/shorts without fasteners

• Put a carry strap for a backpack or similar thing on.

• Puts on pants/shorts with elastic waist

• Puts on shoes

• Puts on t-shirt, dress, or sweater with no fasteners

• Puts on a diaper with side flaps (not pull-up style).

• Removes on a diaper with side flaps (not pull-up style).

• Takes off front opening garments.

• Puts on mittens

• Puts on socks

• Unfastens buttons

• Puts on a coat or jacket (or other front-opening garment)

• Unfastens snaps

• Fastens snaps

• Takes off pullover garments 

She's able to pull her pants, undies and diaper off most of the time, but runs into trouble sometimes. She needs help with her shirt, too.

She's also recently started putting on pull-ups independently, and will occasionally change her own diaper if I leave the clean pull-up pack within reach of her crib when she's in there. Diapers with side flaps are too hard for her to put on, though.

She usually gets front-opening garments off, but she sometimes gets her arms stuck, especially if it's a bit of a tight fit or she tries to pull both arms out simultaneously. She helps put them on, but can't do so independently.

She tries to help get her backpack leash on, but usually puts her arm in the wrong strap.

She's mastered putting her shoes and socks on, though she still doesn't know which shoe goes on which foot. She helps with putting on pants and shirt and most other clothes, but can't do it independently. She also can't put mittens on, but she helps push her limbs into them. Although recently she spontaneously decided to put a glove on and managed to even get her fingers in each finger of the glove.

She can consistently do and undo the kind of snaps her high chairs, bike helmet and backpacks have. She doesn't always know what to do with the straps, but she does seem to be able to do and undo those snaps consistently. However, the kind of snaps typical of other kinds of clothing are harder - she's only sometimes able to undo them and do them back up. Buttons are even harder, and she hasn't made much progress with them.

She also doesn't know which strap goes over which shoulder when putting her backpack on. She consistently tries to put it on backwards.

3-3½ Year Goals

Here's the new goals in this area:

• Unzips

• Puts on gloves

• Unties

• Puts shoes on correct feet

• Zip engaged zipper

• Puts stuff in clothing pockets and takes it out again

She's been learning to unzip her bike trailer lately. It has a zippered storage space on the back and a zippered mesh cover over the seating area, both of which she has been zipping and unzipping for fun. She still finds it difficult sometimes, but she's close to having this mastered. She's also starting to zip things back up sometimes, such as putting her markers in her backpack and zipping it up.

The gloves goal was intended for age 4, but I've moved it down because she independently put a glove on once.

She once tried and failed to undo a bow, but she hasn't had the opportunity to try again for awhile. 

She's starting to show signs of noticing that shoes on the wrong feet are less comfortable, but she's still not able to tell before she puts them on.

Recently she tried to use her diaper as a pocket, so I put a jacket with pockets on her and put the toys in her jacket pockets instead. Then I realized I hadn't set a goal for learning to use pockets appropriately, so I decided to add one.

Tool Use

2-3 Year Goals

Here's the goals she was working on in this area:

• Understands that medicine helps them feel better

• Turns on lights when in the dark

• Fit multiple objects efficiently into a single container

• Pushing buttons to operate electronic devices.

• Demonstrates appropriate use of playground equipment

• Digs with a shovel or rake

A couple months ago I broke the syringe I'd been using to feed her Tylenol, and offered her the medication cup instead and she drank it. For a while, it was fairly easy to give her Tylenol. I wasn't sure if she understood that it helps her or just likes the taste and doesn't like being force-fed. However, then she had an upper respiratory infection and needed Claritin and an inhaler with a spacer. She loved the spacer, but hated the Claritin, and it got her to start refusing to take any medication from her little cup.

She was obsessed with flicking light switches for a while. She can't reach most of them, but a couple at the office were in reach, and she often repeatedly turned the lights on and off for fun. She got out of that phase before we shut down the office, but clearly she knows how, so I'm going to mark this as mastered.

Recently one of her favorite games has been putting foam blocks in her car wash toy, and she's been pretty efficient at packing them in. However, she's still making mistakes putting her stacking cups in each other, so I'm not marking this as mastered yet.

She got so obsessed with fiddling with the buttons on our electronic fireplace that we decided to turn it off. In addition, the developmental specialist brought a toy that included buttons to turn the lights on it on and off, and she figured that out pretty quickly. She doesn't always know what the buttons on things do, but she understands that pushing buttons makes stuff happen, so I'm marking this one as mastered.

She's getting pretty good with slides, and she can also climb steps or ramps well. She also loves the baby swingset at the local park. But there's still plenty of playground equipment she hasn't really figured out yet or doesn't know how to use safely, so this is a work in progress.

During winter I had her shoveling snow witheme on several occasions and she was showing steady improvement. I'm hoping to do some gardening this summer, so hopefully we can get her digging in dirt, too.

3-3½ Year Goals

There's one new goal in this area:

• Adjusts temperature for use

Our bathtub has one nozzle that you turn further to get hotter water. She's adjusted it down a couple times when I accidentally set it too hot, but she hasn't done it since.

Chores

2-3 Year Goals

Here's the goals we were working on in this area:

• Wipes tables

• Sets table - brings utensils to table

• Sets table - brings drinks

• Puts dishes away

• Keeps personal area organized

• Put clean laundry away

• Puts letter in mailbox

• Turns faucets off and on

• Rinses dirty dishes

• Cleans floor - use small broom with help

• Cleans floor - mop small areas, clean up spills with towel

• Clears table

• Scrubs objects to clean them

• Pours and stirs ingredients

I still haven't gotten around to working on getting her to help set tables. But she's been spontaneously bringing drinks to people she knows like that kind of drink - regular Coke and Gatorade to me, diet Coke to her grandpa, Dr Pepper to her uncle, etc. So I guess that kinda counts?

She often spontaneously puts her things where she thinks they belong, and even if she doesn’t do it on command, she will usually help clean up if asked to. In fact, she's often more concerned about stuff being put away correctly than I am, and will sometimes disagree with me about where things belong. So I’d say she’s mastered keeping her personal area organized.

We haven't mailed any letters lately.

For a while she was consistently turning on the tap in the tub, but she seems to have forgotten how to do it recently.

She loves rinsing dishes and has been doing so consistently whenever I give her the opportunity, so I'm marking this as mastered. 

She's been obsessed with sweeping a broom around lately, but doesn't really seem to know what to do with it. She's played a bit with her mop, too, and sometimes she'll clean up spills with a cloth.

She got poop on her scrub and I couldn't figure out how to get it clean so I ended up throwing it out. So she hasn’t had an opportunity to practice this.

She has been playing with pouring water between two cups in the tub, but hasn't been stirring lately.

3-3½ Year Goals

Here's the new goals in this area:

• Folds laundry - folds washcloths

• Throws garbage away in the garbage can.

I've never tried to get her to fold washcloths before, but I bet she could do it, so we're going to start trying it soon.

She's recently started spontaneously labeling empty snack packaging as garbage and throwing it away, so I added a goal for it.

Money Management

2-3 Year Goals

This is a new subject area with just one new goal:

• Recognizes that money is exchanged for wants and needs

Still no progress here, but she has figured out that I want her to bring lost coins she finds to me. I have recently gotten her a piggy bank to put coins in, and I'm planning to start getting her to buy stuff with her savings in a while. She's also been playing a shopping minigame in the Numberblocks World app which is working on this concept.

Motor Development

Equilibrium

2-3 Year Goals

Here's the goals in this area:

• Rolls a ball to another.

• Pulls toy behind them while walking.

• Walking up or down stairs instead of crawling.

• Demonstrate spatial awareness in physical activity or movement.

• Descending stairs independently.

A few months ago, progress on a lot of these goals slowed down-mostly thanks to winter. Most of the stairs she had regular contact with were outside, and they were usually snowy or icy and just too hazardous for her to try on her own, so she wanted my help. She was also walking less and riding in her stroller more, especially since her grandpa got her a convertible stroller/bike trailer with a protective cover. I kept blankets in there, so it was way warmer than walking next to me, and she was pretty happy to ride along. Because of all that, she wasn’t coming up to random stairs to practice on walks like she does in the summer. Around then, she also wasn’t showing much interest in balls, aside from a couple games of fetch, so we didn’t really work on that.

She did spend some time wandering up and down the hallway with her wheeled toy barbecue set. Her grandpa also got a walker, and she was fascinated with it-dragging it around and, of course, climbing on it whenever she could.

Now that it’s spring, there’s been a definite shift. She’s gotten really confident with stairs-so much so that she’s been getting past the babygate at home and making a beeline for them whenever she gets the chance. She goes up and down on her own now and is very sure of herself. She’s also back to walking more when we’re out, so she’s running into more opportunities to practice on random stairs like she did last summer.

She’s still working on spatial awareness. On one of our walks a while back (when there was still plenty of snow), she tried to climb over a snowbank instead of taking the clear path around it. She slipped back down, gave up, and hopped back in the sled-never seeming to notice the easier way. It’s still a work in progress!

3-3½ Year Goals

Here's the new goals in this area:

• Riding on a vehicle like a bicycle.

• Jumping with both feet off the ground.

• Pushes toy while walking.

She's just recently started work on riding and jumping.

The developmental specialist asked me to fill out the Ages & Stages questionnaire a while  back because it'd been a while since we last filled it out, and one of the questions pertained to jumping. At that point I'd never seen her attempt to jump, so I decided to test it by coming up to her and saying “jump!” and jumping. Ever since then, this has been a fun game she does sometimes when she's in the mood. She's only occasionally able to actually get off the ground, but she's making progress.

As for riding a vehicle, she went to a preschool readiness program for awhile recently and part of their routine was playing in the multipurpose room, and riding the trikes in there was one of her favorite activities.

She's been working on push toys for much longer, and has made progress with them but is still prone to running into things.

Hand Control

2-3 Year Goals

Here's the goals she was working on in this area:

• Pokes with index finger.

• Tries to imitate scribbling.

• Putting rings on a stick.

• Turning knobs.

• Painting using whole arm movements to make strokes.

• Putting shapes into a shape sorter without assistance.

• Flipping switches.

• Builds structures with interlocking pieces.

• Stringing 3-4 large beads.

• Building a tower of 3-5 small blocks

• Holding a crayon with thumb and fingers.

• Opening doors independently.

• Completing insert puzzles.

She's almost got poking mastered, but she still sometimes struggles to activate the touchscreen on my phone when playing with educational apps.

She's working on knobs. Grandpa recently replaced the light in the bathroom at the office with some timed thing controlled by a knob, and for a while, whenever I was taking her to change a poopy diaper, she usually wanted to turn the knob herself. She wasn't usually able to, but she succeeded a couple times.

I decided to downgrade scribbling from fully mastered to partially mastered because I discovered that crayons were difficult for her, probably because you have to exert more force with them than her other writing implements. She was drawing super faintly and struggled to make visible lines at all. However, she's shown a lot of improvement in that area between 2½ and 3, so I'm actually setting that back to fully mastered now.

I'm going to mark rings on a stick as mastered. She's been doing this as part of several different puzzle sets without problems. Beading is still a work in progress, but when the structure she's putting the ring/bead on is solid and unmoving she can do it easily.

She's been regularly building towers of 5 or more blocks. I'm going to call this mastered.

She hasn't been playing with her shape sorter lately, so I brought it out to test her skills, and she could do most of the shapes, but still struggled with some of them. So that's not quite mastered yet.

One of her Kiwico boxes came with a bunch of weirdly shaped crayons specifically designed to help her develop a good grip, and she holds them with fingers and thumb. So she's working on this.

We haven't done any painting in quite awhile. I did get her to help paint her toy garage, which she did pretty well at, but I should probably think of another occasion to do more painting.

I'm going to mark flipping switches as mastered. She has a toy that has a bunch of jack-in-the-box characters with different activation methods. She can do all of them independently, and one of them is a switch. She also regularly plays with the light switches she can reach, and has no trouble flicking them on and off. She's also mastered insert puzzles.

Doors are close to mastered. She can consistently open the door to our porch at home, and often does so to let the dog back inside. However, that door is a lever latch door, and doorknobs are more challenging for her. She's able to open doorknob doors inconsistently. 

3-3½ Year Goals

Here's the new goals:

• Building a tower of approximately nine small blocks.

• Tracing on thick lines.

• Completing 2-4 pc interlocking puzzles.

• Completing 4-6 pc interlocking puzzles.

• Holding a pencil with thumb and fingers on opposite sides of the pencil.

• Using the non-dominant hand to assist and stabilise objects.

• Making snips with scissors.

• Use an eye-dropper successfully to transfer liquid between containers.

• Trace around an object to copy its shape.

• Turning single pages in a book.

She got a set of wooden blocks with hiragana for Christmas and was able to build towers up to 8, and she's also built Numberblocks out of her bath blocks up to 14 (two stacks of 7). So she's getting close to mastering this.

She hasn't done anything related to tracing, except for several months ago attempting to imitate lines when I was drawing with her. However, mostly when I draw with her, she just randomly scribbles with no obvious relationship between her lines and mine.

One of her upcoming goals at 2½ to complete interlocking puzzles with 4-6 pieces. Meanwhile, for Christmas she received a bunch of 2 piece puzzles interlocking which were difficult for her at that time. So I decided to set a goal as a precursor to the 4-6 piece puzzle goal. Since then, however, she has mastered this skill, so I'm moving on to the 4-6 piece goal.

She hasn't fully settled on a dominant hand, but I think I've seen her stabilize things with one hand to do stuff. I haven't really been paying attention to it though.

She got a playdough set from Kiwico around 2½ that included a set of very dull scissors only really able to cut playdough. She was struggling to learn to cut with them, but managed to do so by grabbing each handle with one hand and pushing her hands together. She's also been cutting paper at the parent & child Pre-K program she's been going to. And just recently she was cutting paper with a one-handed hold on the scissors, so she's now close to having this mastered.

She got an eye-dropper from a Kiwico box many months ago, and couldn't use it at all. However, later at the Pre-K program they were painting snow using eye-droppers, and she successfully did it a couple times without help.

She did a bit of tracing around shapes on a water mat awhile back, but we haven't practiced it since.

She's getting better at turning pages in a book, but still often turns several at once.

Swimming

2-3 Year Goals

Here are the goals for swimming:

• Water adjustment for child to feel comfortable in and out of the water.

• Blowing bubbles and getting face wet.

• Learning front and back float with or without support.

• Developing arm and leg actions in the water.

• Introduction to appropriate water safety skills such as entry/exit.

We've fixed our water heater, and between that and the cold weather, my dad's health problems making him unable to drive, and the local pool closing for repairs, I haven't taken Kai swimming for months now. She has been making progress on one goal, however, since she's been trying to imitate me washing my hair by laying on her back in the tub.

There's no new goals in swimming.

Communication

Receptive Verbal

2-3 Year Goals

Here's the goals she was working on:

• recognise and respond to greetings, farewells, and introductions

• Can identify (by pointing) various body parts.

• Identifies pictures of objects/animals/people in child’s environment

• Follows two part requests e.g. go to the door and open it.

• Answers questions (ex: where, what)

• receive compliments and congratulations

• recognise and respond to descriptions of how something is done

• Points to common areas in house when asked question (ex: mommy go?)

• Answers/responds to questions (ex: who, which, for+for)

She's getting pretty good at greetings and farewells. I credit a lot of this progress to Teletubbies - she definitely understands and is interested in the greeting and farewell routines in that story, and she often waves to the Teletubbies when she's watching them say hello or goodbye. She seems to understand this in English, Dutch, and French, and I think also in Japanese. And given that the ASL signs for hello and goodbye are basically the same as the gestures she's already using, that's basically a freebie for her.

She's gotten really into the various translations of Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes she's been listening to, and will try to follow along. However, when I play games asking her to touch and name body parts or touch the body part I'm naming, she's only occasionally accurate. 

As part of teaching her hiragana, I've been showing her flashcards with a picture and the name of that thing written in hiragana. She's gotten pretty good at naming those pictures, and also pointing out those same things in other contexts and naming them. I'm considering this mastered in Japanese, but not yet in any other language.

She's still working on two-step commands. She usually either ignores them or does one of the commands but not the other one. I haven't worked on this much with her lately, though.

She's answered “what” questions sporadically, but isn't consistently answering any kind of questions yet.

It's hard to tell for sure, but given the way she smiles when she's being praised, I'm pretty sure she understands compliments.

She's responding more to explanations of how to do things, but she still usually needs me to demonstrate it as well as explaining it. I don't think she can follow instructions for a new task without demonstration yet.

I haven't seen her point to rooms to answer questions yet.

3-3½ Year Goals

Here's the one new goal in this area:

• Selects an object described by someone else from an array of objects.

Once, I asked her in Japanese to identify which cube was which color, and she was able to do so. I haven't really worked on this skill otherwise yet.

Expressive Verbal

2-3 Year Goals

Here's the goals she was working on in this area:

• Uses exclamations such as "uh-oh”.

• Use frequently occurring nouns and verbs.

• Has words for most objects in environment even if they are not all recognizable or correctly pronounced.

• Waves bye-bye [spontaneously]

• translate a word from one language to another

• Use frequently occurring adjectives.

• I can tell you what I'm going to do.

• express and respond to apology and thanks

• Verb + Object sentences

• Subject + Object sentences

• Question + Word sentences

• Speak in complete sentences made up of three or more words.

• understanding the function of verb moods, recognising and knowing how to use imperatives

• identify activities and describe them (in a simple way)

• Names objects/animals/people in pictures when asked

• First / second person (I, me, you)

• Gender (he, she, they)

• Name some human body parts.

• Uses possessive pronouns

• Gives age upon request

• Gives first name upon request

• Subject + Verb + Object

• Subject + Verb + Adverbial

• Verb + Object + Object

• Verb + Object + Adverbial

• Question + X + Y

She's been consistently saying “oh no” when things go wrong (e.g. she drops something she wants) so I'm marking exclamations as mastered.

She has a lot of nouns, but there are still plenty of things in her environment that she can't name yet, so this still isn't mastered. 

She's using lots of nouns and verbs now. I set a list of common words for this task and between all her languages she is able to express about half of the nouns and verbs on this list. So there's progress.

She's been waving bye-bye routinely to people who are leaving grandma's office, and also sometimes people she's been interacting with when we're out on walks. I'm going to say this is mastered.

She hasn't made much progress in translating words yet.

She's been using lots of adjectives in English and Japanese, and I'm marking this mastered in both languages. She's still working on this in the other three languages.

She hasn't really been describing her own actions lately, except for echoing me a few times.

She's been echoing me thanking her a few times, and she seems happy when she's thanked, but she hasn't really been thanking others. She said “sorry” once when I accidentally hurt her, but hasn't used it appropriately lately. I think she appreciates when I apologize to her, though.

She's been naming pictures of some animals consistently in Japanese, but not people or objects yet.

She's made a couple Verb + Object sentences. Most of them are immediate echolalia, but she said “need a hug”, “go potty pee” and “read a book” as original phrases.

She hasn't made any Subject + Object sentences, and her only recent use of a question word was immediate echolalia of someone else's question.

In general, most of her sentences are echolalia. Specifically, in January, December and November, 88%, 78%, and 76% of her multi-word utterances were immediate echolalia. I don't know how much immediate echolalia is normal, but that seems like a high percentage to me.

She often uses fairly long sentences, but her original sentences are pretty much always grammatically incorrect in some way (eg “there I are”). Much of her echolalia is also sentence fragments like “need a hug” rather than full sentences. So she's still working on making complete sentences.

We've been playing a game where she commands me to stop and go on walks, but she's not consistently using imperatives in other contexts yet.

She's been describing activities fairly often lately. Stuff like saying “bread, bread, buttering bread” when I was getting a sandwich ready for her, and “I brushing hair” when she was brushing grandpa's hair. I'm going to mark this as mastered for English.

She's using first and second person pronouns a lot, but she's also doing a fair bit of pronoun reversal due to her echolalia, such as saying “brush your teeth” when she wants to brush her own teeth. However, her original phrases tend to use pronouns correctly or not at all. I'm considering this still in progress. She's used “they” correctly but not he or she yet. 

She's not consistently saying body part names except for singing head, shoulders, knees and toes in various languages, and in a couple of echolalia phrases like “brush your teeth”.

She's said “mine” or “that's mine” a few times, but otherwise her only possessive pronoun use is echolalic.

She hasn't made any progress on saying her age yet. She says her name in echolalia but not when asked.

She has used several original Subject + Verb + Object sentences, such as “I brushing hair” (it was grandpa's hair), “I like dinosaurs” (no context) and “I'm the echo” (I commented on her echolalia saying “I feel like I have an echo”). Overall, I'm ready to mark this as mastered.

She's used adverbials a few times, but she's not using them consistently yet.

3-3½ Year Goals

Here's the new goals in this area:

• Vocabulary range of > 150

• Expressive vocabulary range of 250-350

• Points to object and labels; combining nouns and verbs (ex: frog jump)

• Asks two word questions (ex: doggie where?)

• Uses simple descriptors (ex: hot, cold, big, little)

• Uses negatives

• Ik kan plaatjes van een gebeurtenis op goede volgorde leggen. (I can put pictures of an event in the right order.)

• Form regular plural nouns orally by adding /s/ or /es/ (e.g., dog, dogs; wish, wishes).

• recognise, express, and ask about likes and dislikes

• Communicate with other children and adults to share observations, pursue questions, make predictions, and/or conclusions.

• introduce themselves and others

My daughter's vocabulary, not counting translations (eg cat and ねこ count as one word, not two), is almost 600 words. So both of those vocabulary size goals are mastered. Her English vocabulary is 276, Japanese is 180, French 92, Dutch 68, and ASL 60. So she's mastered both vocabulary goals in English, one in Japanese, and is still working on the other three languages.

She's been pointing and labeling, but just with nouns, not verbs.

She uses hot and cold consistently and meaningfully, but not really any other descriptors except colors. She's also not using negatives or plurals consistently yet.

I've been meaning to start working on putting pictures in a sequence with her, but apart from a little bit of stuff with the Cocomelon morning routine unit I did, I haven't really given her any opportunity to do that yet.

Recently she spontaneously said 黄色が好き (I like yellow) while picking out food coloring to put in her bath. A while back, she also nodded when described as a “milk guzzler” by grandma.

She rarely talks in social situations with non-family members, but recently she pointed out a bird to the teacher at her pre-K readiness program.

She hasn't introduced anyone yet.

Literacy

2-3 Year Goals

Here's the goals she was working on in this area:

• Recognize that spoken words are represented in written language by specific sequences of letters.

• Associate hiragana symbols with the sounds they make.

• When given a model of a hiragana, trace it with her finger or a writing implement.

She's been making good progress in hiragana, and currently has shown signs of recognizing about half of the hiragana as associated with their sounds. She definitely understands that hiragana and the Roman alphabet represent sounds, that's mastered. 

She traces kana on the apps by Rainbow Mimizu, but not in any other context currently.

3-3½ Year Goals

Here are the new goals for literacy now:

• Associates many letters (consonants and vowels) with their names and their most frequent sounds.

• Holding a crayon with thumb and fingers.

• Ik kan dezelfde woorden/letters bij elkaar zoeken. (I can match the same words/letters.)

• selects and reads texts for enjoyment and personal fulfilment

• Associate katakana symbols with the sounds they make.

• When given a model of a katakana, trace it with her finger or a writing implement.

I got her foam bath letters, and she's been so interested in them that I've decided to start teaching the Roman alphabet as well as hiragana, focusing on teaching Dutch phonics. She's been making really good progress. For example, she hands over foam bath letters, saying their sounds like "t-t-t-t" for T, "rrr" for R, "uh-uh-uh" for U, and hissing for S. She's also opened her coloring book to Q and said "qu qu qu" unprompted, and correctly identified sounds for P, M, and Q while using magnetic letters.

While playing Rainbow Mimizu's Hiragana game with a stylus, she had a good grip on the stylus, but needed help and alternated between hands. She also generally has a good grasp with crayons.

I haven't asked her to match words/letters much, but she's done that a little bit in apps like AIUE Onigiri and Endless Reader.

She's been getting more interested in books lately and often requests that I read to her. I'm actually inclined to count this as mastered already. 

I've started introducing katakana too, but so far her only attempt at sounding them out has been mistaking エ for the Roman alphabet I.

Nonverbal/Social

2-3 Year Goals

Here's the goals in this area:

• Points to self and objects in his/her environment

• Joint reference (ex: parent and child look at same object)

• Responds to an adult "pointing" at something.

• Begins to point at things with index finger.

• Uses negative headshake alone.

• Recognize when they need to take a break?

• Actively engage in activities and interactions with teachers and peers.

• In structured group activities, imitate others, follow the group and avoid being distracted by irrelevant activities.

• Understands that other people can have different likes and dislikes than their own.

• Recognizes that her reflection in a mirror is her.

• Transition easily from one activity to the next.

• Wait for items or events (lunch, reward, turn)?

• Claps hands.

She still hasn't pointed at herself lately, but she has started consistently pointing to objects of interest lately. She's also gotten better at following my points, but it still usually takes multiple tries to direct her attention. She's still having the same struggles with joint attention too. She also hasn’t shaken her head lately.

She's making progress on recognizing when she needs a break. She still often resists naps, but she'll sometimes voluntarily climb into her stroller when she's getting tired. She even had one nap completely of her own initiative!

She definitely recognizes her reflection and has reacted to markings she made by drawing on her face while looking at her reflection. She's also started doing a thing where she'll bring drinks to the family member who usually drinks them.

She hasn't made much progress handling transitions better. I still often end up having to carry her kicking and screaming from one activity to the next.

She is starting to learn how to wait for her turn at the pre-K program she's been going to lately, but she's not great at waiting for us to buy food at the store, and often ends up whining about me taking it away or trying to open it to eat it before it's purchased.

She's been consistently able to clap for awhile now, so I'm rating that as mastered. 

3-3½ Year Goals

Here's the new goals in this area:

• Move through classroom routines and activities with minimal teacher direction

• Empathize with feelings of others (e.g., get a blanket for a friend and comfort them when they feel sad).

• Independently seek assistance at appropriate times

• Respect the rights of others (e.g., “This painting belongs to Carlos.”).

• Express needs verbally or nonverbally to teacher and peers without being aggressive (e.g., “I don’t like it when you call me dummy. Stop!”).

I mentioned she's started a pre-K program. Once a week, she and I go to a parent-and-child program for a couple hours at a local school, which has a fairly consistent routine that involves starting in the pre-K room, going to the multipurpose room for gym activities, and returning to the pre-K room. She's starting to figure out the routine, but still needs guidance. For example, recently she almost made it from the multipurpose room to the pre-K room without handholding, but when we were getting close, she tried to go into the boys’ bathroom, then tried to return to the multipurpose room. The biggest improvement is in her ability to sit still for circle time, but she's still rarely on task.

Her grandpa has recently developed some serious health issues, and for a couple months he's been in and out of the hospital. Luckily, he's on some new medication that has made him more stable, but during the worst of it, my daughter caught me crying or having a panic attack a few times because I was thinking about him dying. Each time, she's responded by echoing the phrases I use to comfort her, such as “oh, I know”.

She's been pretty good with asking for help. About half the time she'll use words, half the time she just whines and gestures, but the only times she keeps trying and failing to the point of tantrums without asking for help is when I'm not present, e.g. when I've left her in her crib to try to sleep.

She's starting to understand what belongs to which person within the family, but out in public, she still tends to act like anything she comes across is fair game.

She's basically never aggressive, but she's also not very assertive when interacting with other kids. If another kid snatches a toy from her, her default response is just to turn away and find something else. She only really protests when it's a family member taking something, not anyone outside the family. 

Pragmatics - Shares Knowledge/Imaginings

2-3 Year Goals

Here's the goals she was working on:

• Nonverbally role play as/with different characters

• Provides a description using 1-3 words of a situation which describes the main events

• Role plays with props (i.e., banana as phone) using 1-3 words

• Correctly re-tells a story nonverbally which has been told to them

• Correctly re-tells a story which has been told to them using 1-3 words

• Tells a lie nonverbally

• Compares and contrasts qualities of two objects, actions or situations using 1-3 words

She's been silently playing pretend with props for awhile, but just recently started role-play where she takes on a character herself, by marching around like Numberblock 7 while humming his intro song. She's also held her panda toy and said ささすき (like bamboo) because I made her a book about the panda requesting bamboo. I have noticed that as she gets better at clearly expressing what she's pretending, it's become obvious that a lot of her pretend is acting out stuff she's seen modeled, rather than completely new stuff. It also tends to be snippets rather than a coherent narrative.

She hasn't lied yet that I've seen.

She once echoed うるさい (noisy) when I was doing an activity comparing the sound of shaking test tubes filled with powdered milk vs salt, but otherwise she hasn't compared things verbally that I've noticed.

3-3½ Year Goals

Here's the new goal in this area:

• Tells a lie using 1-3 words

I've added this goal because I have a feeling lying might be another goal where she skips the nonverbal stage.

Pragmatics - Personal

2-3 Year Goals

Here's the goals she was working on in this area:

• Blames others nonverbally

• Identifies feelings nonverbally or using  1-3 words (I’m happy.)

• Offers an opinion nonverbally with support

• Explains feelings nonverbally (I’m happy because it’s my birthday)

• Provides excuses or reasons nonverbally

• Complains using 1-3 words

• Offers an opinion with support using 1-3 words

• Provides excuses or reasons using 1-3 words

She's recently started saying “oh no”, “oh God”, and “oh nee” during meltdowns. Otherwise she hasn't made any progress on any of these objectives.

There are no new goals in this area.

Pragmatics - Interactional

2-3 Year Goals

Here's the goals in this area:

• Interact with others in a polite manner, nonverbally or using 1-3 words

• Uses appropriate social rules such as greetings, farewells, thank you, getting attention, nonverbally or using 1-3 words

• Ends a conversation nonverbally

• Nonverbally makes apologies or gives explanations of behavior

• States a problem nonverbally

• Disagrees with others nonverbally

• Revises/repairs an incomplete message, nonverbally or using 1-3 words

• Interjects appropriately into an already established conversation with others, nonverbally or using 1-3 words

• Maintains a conversation (able to keep it going) using 1-3 words

• Criticizes others using 1-3 words

• Compliments others using 1-3 words

• Requests clarification using 1-3 words

• Initiates a topic of conversation using 1-3 words

She’s recently started saying “eh-oh” like the Teletubbies to greet me, and says goodbye to the Teletubbies in multiple languages. Aside from these, she hasn’t used greetings or farewells much in other contexts. She’s been echoing polite words like “merci” and “dank-je-veel” both immediately and after a delay, but hasn’t yet used them appropriately in context. She says “thank you” when she thinks I’m about to thank her for something, but doesn’t use it to thank me. She still rarely uses other social rules, like getting attention, either nonverbally or verbally. She still just kinda wanders off when she's done a conversation. 

She’s not yet using nonverbal cues to apologize or to explain her behavior. Her only expressions of factual disagreement have been occasionally disagreeing verbally on the color of objects.

She’s getting better at explaining problems through gestures, and has started to use phrases to communicate issues-for example, saying “you dropped it” (delayed echolalia to indicate she dropped something) and “high chair” to mean she wants out.

She’s still not very good at revising or repairing incomplete messages, but she is starting to get better at repeating herself when I tell her I didn’t hear her. She still just randomly butts into conversations without warning, rather than interjecting appropriately.

She’s getting pretty good at having conversations with me. While her phrasing is often atypical and includes frequent delayed echolalia, she’s able to take multiple communicative turns and build on what I’ve said. I would consider this skill mastered.

She hasn’t offered criticisms or compliments to others using words lately. She also isn’t yet using words to request clarification.

She’s mastered initiating topics of conversation using 1-3 words, mostly through delayed echolalia focused on subjects she’s intensely interested in.

3-3½ Year Goals

Here's the new goals in this area:

• Makes apologies or gives explanations of behavior using 1-3 words

• States a problem using 1-3 words

She’s beginning to make apologies or give explanations of her behavior using 1-3 words. For example, when asked why she was throwing her food, she replied “all done.” On another occasion, after making a mess with a paper towel roll, she said “I sorry” and helped clean up.

As I mentioned earlier, she’s started to state problems using 1-3 words. For example, she says “you dropped it” (delayed echolalia to indicate she dropped something) and “high chair” to let me know she wants out.

Pragmatics - Other

2-3 Year Goals

Here's the goals in this area:

• Asks questions nonverbally or using 1-3 words to get more information or out of curiosity

• Gives description of an object wanted nonverbally or using 1-3 words

• Requests help using 1-3 words

• Makes requests using 1-3 words

• Gives directions to play a game nonverbally or using 1-3 word statements

• Makes choices using 1-3 words

• Expresses a specific personal need using 1-3 words

• Gives directions nonverbally to make something

• recognise, ask about, and express ability and inability using 1-3 words

She’s been getting better at verbally requesting both help and tangible items, mostly through delayed echolalia that is often only understood by me. She’s also starting to make more choices, especially about which shows I put on for her-she can say Cocomelon, Numberblocks, and Teletubbies, and will request shows or specific episodes using delayed echolalia. She’s also started consistently requesting hugs verbally when she needs comfort. 

Other than that, she’s not really asking questions to get more information or out of curiosity, describing objects she wants, giving directions to play a game, or giving directions nonverbally to make something.

She's responded to questions about her own abilities a handful of times - she said “maybe” when asked if she could imitate a funny sound, “no” when asked if she could get her shirt over her head and echoed “frustrated” when I asked if an educational app that was too advanced for her was making her frustrated. 

There's no new goals in this area.

Sensory and Science

Sensory

2-3 Year Goals

Here's the goals she was working on:

• Discriminate objects by sight (0.SS.021)

• Discriminate objects by the sense of touch (0.SS.032)

• Identify objects by sound (0.SS.043)

She’s clearly noticing differences between objects by sight-she often names toys and plays with them appropriately, like kicking the ball and hugging the teddy bear. She sometimes follows commands to pick out specific objects, though not consistently, even when she seems to understand the words. She also reacts differently to familiar versus unfamiliar objects, often heading straight for new toys in a room. So I’d say she’s making good progress on visual discrimination, and I'm marking this as mastered.

I haven’t seen much consistent evidence that she can identify objects by touch alone, partly because she doesn’t always follow instructions for those kinds of activities. She does sometimes explore new objects with her hands, especially when I model it, and I think she can tell differences like smooth versus rough, but she hasn’t shown this clearly on her own yet.

Her sound discrimination is strong. She recognizes familiar sounds like rattles or food wrappers and responds appropriately. She reacts to animal sounds and household noises by naming or imitating them, like saying our dog’s name when she hears barking or saying “toc-toc-toc” when someone knocks. She doesn’t consistently name sounds when asked, often echoing them instead, but she clearly understands and engages with them. I'm also marking this as mastered. 

3-3½ Year Goals

Here's the new goals in this area:

• Develop a sense of aesthetics

• Explore and discover variation in two-dimensional shapes and the relations between them

• Experience, match and grade variation in temperature

• Explore variation in sound and its qualities

• Experience, identify and create different rhythms and beats

• Distinguish, identify and name different smells

• Identify, distinguish between and name the main tastes (sweet, sour, salty, bitter)

• We make sounds by actions such as striking, blowing, plucking, and scraping.

She is beginning to develop a sense of aesthetics, especially through her love of music and dance, and enjoys creative activities like scribbling and arranging art supplies, though she hasn’t shown strong color or pattern preferences yet. She recognizes and names basic shapes, sometimes mixing up square and triangle in Japanese but getting them right in English and French, and is confident matching and sorting shapes in toys. She also notices temperature differences in daily life, responding appropriately to hot food and preferring a cooler bath, and shows understanding by requesting a jacket or mittens in cold weather even if she doesn’t label the weather as such.

Her engagement with sound is strong-she dances in time with music, loves playing instruments, and frequently mimics both musical and environmental sounds. She enjoys making up her own rhythms and adjusts her dancing to match changes in tempo, though she isn’t yet able to imitate specific rhythm patterns or follow structured rhythm games. While she is interested in group musical activities, she finds it challenging to follow along with others.

In terms of sensory exploration, she occasionally sniffs flowers but hasn’t shown much interest in identifying or describing other smells. She shows clear preferences for certain foods, especially sweet and umami flavors, and will request favorites, but she doesn’t yet name or describe tastes like “sweet” or “sour.”

She has made sounds with instruments by plucking, scraping, and striking, and on one occasion also blew into a flute successfully. So, a few more successful uses of wind instruments and I'll be calling this mastered.

Science

2-3 Year Goals

Here's the science goals we were working on:

• Matches objects to pictures.

• Pairs identical pictures.

• Pairs related pictures.

• Sorts objects by shape.

• Sorts objects by color.

• Sorts objects by category (e.g. buttons, animals, beads etc.).

She is still working on matching objects to pictures. When shown a toy animal and several animal pictures, she hasn’t been successful in matching them correctly yet, but we’ve only tried this a few times. However, I bought her a Numberblocks themed set of building cubes for her 3rd birthday, which came with lesson plans with corresponding activity cards, and she's been spontaneously matching her Numberblocks with pictures of them on the activity cards.

She is not yet able to pair identical pictures independently, such as matching two pictures of the same animal. We haven’t tested her ability to pair related pictures (like a shoe and a sock), so that skill is still unknown.

She recognizes and names shapes well and can complete shape puzzles, but she hasn’t been observed sorting objects by shape yet. Sorting by color is a strength-she can independently sort colored blocks or rings and often does this on her own during play. I'm marking this as mastered.

Sorting objects by category is emerging. She has spontaneously sorted vegetables by type during mealtime and frequently organizes different categories of toys into separate places when cleaning up, showing an understanding of grouping items by type.

3-3½ Year Goals

Here's the new goals in this area:

• Correctly name shapes regardless of their orientations or overall size.

• Investigate how and why things move (e.g., slide block, balance structures, push structures over, use ramps to explore how far and how fast different objects move or roll).

• Observe and record change over time and cycles of change that affect living things (e.g., monitoring the life cycle of a plant, using children’s baby photographs to discuss human change and growth, using unit blocks to record the height of classroom plants).

• Observe and build knowledge of a variety of animals

She spontaneously names basic shapes like squares, triangles, and circles in French during play, recognizing them across different sizes and orientations. While she rarely responds to direct prompts and hasn’t yet used “rectangle,” she shows solid understanding of shapes. In Japanese, she is still learning to distinguish between the words for square and triangle. Self-correction hasn’t been observed, but overall, her shape naming skills are progressing well.

For quite a while she's been playing with ramps. She has a set of fittable ramp pieces with suction cups for the tub, and keeps setting them back up in a new arrangement whenever they get knocked down or removed because they got in the way of a family member's bath. She had balls that came with them, but they got damaged and I'll need to replace them.

I'm planning to get my daughter to help me set up a little patch of beans and sunflowers in the garden very soon. We previously had a bean growing in a pot, but it sadly died when my daughter played too roughly with it.

She's been learning about various animals incidentally for a long time, but just recently she's been specifically noticing small arthropods more. She usually calls them “spider” initially, but readily echoes me when I correct her with more accurate terms like fly, beetle, ant, etc. She's also been noticing birds, which she describes as oiseaux.

Math

2-3 Year Goals

This is a new subject area. Here's the goals in this area:

• Count from 1 to 5

• Recognize the written numbers 0-9 and label them with corresponding words.

• When counting objects, say the number names in the standard order, pairing each object with one and only one number name and each number name with one and only one object.

She's been doing better than I expected here. The Sightwords.com counting curriculum went really well for the first few activities. We switched to focusing on Dutch instead of Japanese because Japanese counting is complicated, and she got to the point of counting to five semi-consistently, but stalled out on the third activity (where you're supposed to hide objects and get them to tell you how many there are). Meanwhile, she also started watching Numberblocks in French, and with basically no other exposure to French numbers she got to the point of counting to five in French as well.

And then, just recently, she went from occasionally watching Numberblocks to requesting it constantly, and at the same time, her counting has exploded. She's now sometimes successfully counting up to 14 (one of her favorite Numberblocks characters) in English and French, though she's still only consistent up to 5. Still, that's one goal mastered. She's also recognizing written numbers inconsistently, again likely because of Numberblocks. And she's almost consistently counting with one-to-one correspondence now, but I'm not ready to mark that as mastered just yet.

3-3½ Year Goals

Here's the new goals in this area:

• Counts from 5 to 10 (VCSL 81)

• Can count up to 15 (VCSL 84)

• Fluently add and subtract within 5. (CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.K.OA.A.5)

• Recognizes that two groups of discrete objects have the same number of objects even if the objects are arranged differently. (Piagetian conservation of number)

• Compose and decompose numbers from 11 to 19 into ten ones and some further ones, e.g., by using objects or drawings, and record each composition or decomposition by a drawing or equation (such as 18 = 10 + 8); understand that these numbers are composed of ten ones and one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, or nine ones. (CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.K.NBT.A.1)

As mentioned above, she's starting to count up to 14 sometimes, so I've got to add the next two counting goals at once.

As for adding and subtracting and conservation of number, I mentioned above that I bought her a Numberblocks themed set of building cubes for her 3rd birthday, and it came with lesson plan suggestions. Those are two objectives covered by several of the early lessons, so we'll see how that goes.

Meanwhile, the objective about understanding two-digit numbers is one she's started spontaneously working on by trying to build two-digit numbers with her foam bath numbers. She tried to make 14 and wrote 41, and then a couple months later she correctly made 10. 

Executive Functioning

2-3 Year Goals

Here's the goals she's working on in this area:

• Transition times rarely incite tantrums/excessive anxiety. 

• Can remember and follow simple one- to two-step routines (such as brushing teeth and combing hair after breakfast).

Transitions are still a work in progress. Some days she handles switching activities just fine, but other times-especially if she’s tired or has to stop something really fun-she’ll have a full-on tantrum. That usually means crying, flailing, and going boneless on the floor. It’s happening a couple of times a day lately, so it’s definitely something we’re still working through.

Advance warnings sometimes help, and distraction used to be a good trick, but it’s not as effective these days. Overall, transitions actually seem to have gotten a little harder for her over the past few months, so I’m going to keep experimenting with different strategies and see what helps.

On the other hand, she's been getting very good at following familiar routines, and even starting to show signs of insistence on routines, such as getting upset when I double back to get something I forgot at the grocery store or while getting ready for a walk. I'm going to mark this as mastered, and maybe consider setting a goal for handling unexpected changes if this trend continues.

3-3½ Year Goals

Here's the new goal in this area:

• Independently pursues hobbies and activities of personal interest.

I had this goal set for 3 years, but I think she has already reached this goal. She consistently selects toys, books, and art materials on her own, engages in self-chosen activities like coloring and building for extended periods, and shows clear preferences by returning to favorite activities. While she sometimes gets distracted, she generally focuses on and completes simple tasks she chooses. Given her consistent independent engagement, this objective can be considered mastered.