Hellobee Boards

I'm a PT who treats early intervention kiddos. I would DEFINITELY get your doctor to prescribe therapy. Every kid develops at their own pace but not crawling or pulling up at 12 months is pretty behind. It cant hurt ti get therapy, and if nothing else you can look at it as an hour of exercise and play 1-2x weekly.

I'm not sure if you can get an evaluation without the doctors prescription. It's different for each state.

I'm an occupational therapist and I sought early intervention when my LO was 6.5-7 months because he haaaaated tummy time and never attempted to roll when he was awake (he only rolled in his sleep!). It took about 8 weeks to get an appointment with an OT and she gave me some good tips but my LO had already made a lot of gains come appointment time and he crawled the following week.

He is 1.5 now and I have him on the waitlist for speech services even though all of the SLPs I work with tell me not to worry.

I'm in Canada and we don't need referrals for EI services as it's government-funded. There are long wait lists though. For speech, it's about 4-6 months. Because I'm in the field, I don't think there's any harm at all in pursuing services and having an assessment done...even if it's for peace of mind.

My LO was a late walker, she didn't walk until 17 months. The doctor said that we should schedule a test to see if she needs PT.... but I just felt like she didn't need it. She is just really cautious. I was right, LO was fine and she did eventually walk. But that was my gut.... if your gut is saying go to PT, I would do that

I would call. Even if he doesn't need it, it will put your mind at rest. It's wonderful his fine motor skills are so well developed, I think that's a sign that he's just been interested in other things.
Best of luck.

I would suggest getting the eval. If you feel your instincts telling you something might not be right, listen to your gut! I wish we would have pursued more with Ellie when she was smaller-- turns out she DOES have some motor planning issues which were not discovered until she was six. I asked about getting her evaluated by EI and the doctor said not to worry. I guess I don't see what it could hurt, and at the very least, if they don't see cause for worry it should give you some peace of mind, which is no small thing. Good luck!

I also agree that if your gut is telling you something's up, get the eval. It certainly won't hurt. If everything's fine and he's just taking his time, then you get the piece of mind you need. If it turns out he does need a little help, then it's great you got it for him early. Seems like a win/win. But I do just want to say that a good friend of mine was very concerned because her LO didn't crawl until he was 13 months. It was very stressful for them waiting on him to figure it out. Well once he started he just took off and was full on running by 15 months. So sometimes kids really do just do things at their own pace.

@SeptMomma12: She was a little behind, but not by enough to cause worry. She's a big girl, as a baby she was 90th percentile in height and weight so we blamed a lot of it on her having so much weight to pull up. She army crawled before she actually crawled. I was hard for me to decide if I wanted to get an eval because like I said, I just didn't feel like anything was wrong, but if there was something wrong I didn't want to let it go and then it's my fault that it's not getting fixed. Like you we picked a certain age (our doctor said that if she wasn't walking by thanksgiving we should go ahead and do it), and she ended up walking about a week later. Good luck.... it's hard making these decisions as parents!