19 months: Preschool?

"The preschool that you are considering for Harry offers low-priced developmental assessments. Harry is able to enroll when he becomes reasonably well potty-trained. He is 19 months old now. Just to find out how Harry's development compares to other children of his age at this point, you have an assessment done. The early childhood specialist observes Harry in free play with other kids and does a little testing of cognitive skills. She reports the following:

Harry was not very aggressive with the other kids, unless one of them tried to grab a toy from him and then he resisted. The examiner recommended that Harry continue to go to toddler play groups/daycare to develop his skill in interacting with other children. At home, her general advice for the toddler negativism that was bound to happen at this age was to use clear and simple explanations for rules, warnings and time outs for misbehavior, and encouragements to "use your words" if Harry wanted something.

The specialist noted that Harry seemed insecure and uncertain about your attentions, and tended to cling too much and to be hard to soothe when upset. She recommended being a lot more consistent and reliable in paying attention to Harry and giving him comfort and affection.

The specialist thought that Harry was slow to warm up to new situations with adults, but that if you gave him time, he usually came around.

Harry was generally in a positive mood during the play sessions, but occasionally could be irritable or impatient when things did not go his way.

Harry scored at about the 18-19 month range for communication skill, language comprehensionand language production. This is age-appropriate of course, but the examiner recommended that because Harry was in such an important period of language development, that you spend as much time as possible talking with Harry, asking questions that require some kind of extended answer (rather than just "yes" or "no"), and looking at and naming things in picture books, etc.

Harry was age-appropriate on tasks such as building a block tower to model one made by the examiner and other spatial skills such as copying shapes, coloring within the lines and solving picture puzzles.

Harry was advanced in his gross motor skills. The examiner recommended that you expose Harry to a variety of indoor and outdoor activities and let his interests be the guide as to what to pursue.

The examiner commented that Harry was able to concentrate on activities for 10-15 minutes, which was age-appropriate. Harry was coming along fine, but she still recommended trying to engage Harry's attention in something really interesting for longer and longer periods of time, to gradually build up his tolerance for preschool-type activities. She also recommended getting Harry to follow simple directions at home, gradually increasing the complexity and length of the directions" (My Virtual Child).