I recently wrote about Olivia’s birth story, our third girl born at the beginning of the pandemic. Since then, I’ve written a lot but never published the story of discovering her developmental delays and the adventure of her therapies (well, actually, I’ve posted about it on Instagram, but I’ve never blogged about it).

In December 2020 I took her for her 9 month well check. Using the ASQ-3 9-month form sent by her pediatrician, I confirmed several hunches that I’d had up to that point that she was not meeting milestones she should have been. She was referred for physical therapy to help her roll, get to sitting, and so on. At her visit, the pediatrician agreed that her growth and cognition were good, but that developmentally she seemed like she was at about 6 months.

Why Won’t My Kids Listen?

Spoiler alert: you don’t (and they won’t). Wait wait wait, please keep reading, I promise there’s something useful here! If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a ton of times: it takes a village. My friends and neighbors and small group and Mothers Ministry are my village, and someone from each one of those groups has either parented their children or somehow given me a tidbit of wisdom in PRACTICAL real-time situations that stuck with me. What I mean is, I read tons of blogs and books and listened to tons of podcasts on parenting, but there’s just something about seeing a mom interact with her five-year-old who is having a colossal meltdown in front of you that makes it stick with you more than all the best blog posts in the world.

Read on, and don’t forget to comment at the end if you have something that’s been particularly helpful in your season. Share so we can all benefit (myself included)!

Yep, that’s right. I’d like to say it’s always been the plan, but back in December my husband and I decided it was probably a lot less chaotic to send our oldest to brick and mortar traditional kindergarten. So we enrolled her in Pre-K in January, and she did great for 8 weeks! Then COVID shut everything down. And well, now here we are.

It’s been ten weeks of coronavirus shutdown. Since all this began, life has changed so much—both because of the covid-19 pandemic and because we had a baby at the beginning of the country’s outbreak. We’re not only adjusting to life with three kids but adjusting to a new normal along the way. And since every day is the-same-but-different as information and recommendations change, “new normal” seems like a moving target.