What We're Working on Tuesday...Good Bye Speech Therapy!

Since Christian was a 9 month old little baby he has been in speech therapy. It started with his Early Intervention teachers playing on the floor with him, playing music, shaking rattles and helping him identify sounds. We would clap and cheer and say "Good Listening Christian!"and my sweet little man would clap his hands.

As he grew and received his Cochlear Implant, along with his teachers, we quickly learned that Christian was special. He was our profoundly deaf child who was also an AUDITORY learner. As parents, Chuck and I worked hard, and Christian worked even harder. Once Christian started at his school at 18 months, he  took off. He kept up, and eventually passed language and listening levels of his hearing peers. And now, 2 years post-implantation, he has graduated out of speech therapy. We're so incredibly proud of all the hard work that he has accomplished over these past 2 years, and beyond thankful for early and CONSISTENT intervention.  It is also comforting to know that while he will no longer be receiving pull-out therapy or related services that he will have the watchful eyes of his in-class educator, SLP, and team of teachers at school next year. In the meantime, we're going to enjoy a summer of going to camps, the beach, and having FUN!

What We're Working on Tuesday-Using Our Chompers

We've noticed that even though Christian is a relatively good eater, he is also INCREDIBLY slow. While he doesn't have any texture issues or sensory issues with food, there are times where he has actually gagged on various proteins. At first we figured that he was just being a 3 year old, preferring to eat his fruit and carbs and skip the protein all together. But then, we've noticed and his teachers have pointed out that he is often observed using an immature chew, meaning he uses his front and side teeth instead of his back molars.

To wake up Christian's chompers, we're working on making him more aware of his back teeth. We're using toothbrushes before he eats to remind him what it actually FEELS like to have something in the back of his mouth. We have also have given him gum (GASP!) and have helped model how we use our back teeth

What We're Working on Tuesday-Irregular Past-Tense

As always, the /f/ sound is at the top of our list, and I'm PLEASED to report that Christian's pull-out SLP reported today that she was "Really proud of Christian as his /f/ is really coming along with prompts. She's seeing it in isolation and in syllables! Great job BUDDY!

We're working on irregular past tense verbs at home, and Christian's SLP also reported that they are working on it with him in his pull-out therapy. At home, we've continued to model appropriate usage of the irregular past-tense verb. This happens at least 2-3x a day:

"Mommy,  did you bringed my laundry upstairs for me?"
Modeled "Yes, Christian, I BROUGHT your laundry upstairs. Let's try that again. Say Did you BRING my laundry upstairs?"

"Lily drinked all of her juice, Mama! I'll go get her some more"
Modeled "Christian, I think Lily DRANK all her juice. I'll get her more, you sit tight and finish your breakfast".

I know, as do his teachers, that this is a really advanced language skill, but I think it is SO important for us to continue to model the correct words and introduce their usuage. Christian's pull-out SLP has been working on picture cards with him, and he's getting about a 30 percent accuracy rate on those right now. We're just going to keep at it!

What We're Working on Tuesday: Self-Advocacy

Christian has been a rock-star when it comes to replacing his magnet when it falls out of contact, and he will bring us his implant when it falls off. He is fantastic reporting problems with his CI, although battery drain in regards to his hearing aid is another story. Long and the short of it, he's doing such a good job making sure he is constantly amplified.

We're currently working on the way Christian reports what he can and cannot hear while in conversation. While he is very consistent, the method of which he reports needs work. We're helping him find other ways to let us know rather than just saying "What?" and "What did you say?". Preferred requests include "Say it again, please" or "I didn't hear that". I know this sounds REALLY nit-picky, but this also ties into ensuring we give Christian the opportunity to thrive in all social situations. We want him to tell his peers at school to "Say it again" or telling them "I didn't hear what you just said".

What We're Working on Tuesday: More on the /f/ sound

As the weeks go on, Christian is producing the /f/ sound in all positions more consistently. We're still working on limiting the substitution of /b/ for /f/ in some words, which is a bit challenging now that Christian will PURPOSEFULLY substitute it when he's being a bit *difficult* :)

I have a worksheet that our SLP gave to us to help. It  has the following groupings together, with pictures:
fat/bat
full/bull
far/bar
funny/bunny
fell/bell

With the help of Skittles and M&Ms, Christian and I go through each of these groupings really noticing what each word sounds and feels like. We've found it helpful to separate the initial /f/ from the beginning of the word, so Christian will say f-------ull.  This isn't his favorite activity, but he's working on it. We DO know that this is not an auditory issue as he completely can discriminate the meaning of the words.

New Tuesday Themed Posts: What We're Working On

I thought it would be fun to include a themed post every week to detail exactly what we're working on as far as my Mommy Speech Therapy here at home. With a little guidance from Christian's SLPs at school, and a whole heck of a lot of research on my end, I've been able to have targeted goals every week for Christian.

This week, we're concentrating on the use of two or more descriptives together. Christian's vocabulary is vast. He often uses two or more descriptives unsolicited, but we want to continue to work on this skill when he is asked questions. The best way for us to work on this at home is to utilize what we have, so I'm pulling out his Matchbox Cars. I found the easiest (and fastest!) ways to introduce new games to Christian is to model what I want him to do. I picked up a car and showed it to him and said "Christian, this car is big and purple". Then, I'll give him a car and have him give describe it to me. We can also turn this into a listening game when I'll ask him to find "The small red car".  We turn it into playtime, and he ALWAYS gets a candy reward for being my good listener and talker!

Stay tuned for next week...I have something FUN planned for continued practice on categories!

Insanity and The soft /th/ sound

I'm just going to throw it out there and say that of all the days of the week, Tuesdays are usually the craziest in our family. Our schedule gets thrown a bit since Christian stays after school for speech therapy with one of our amazing SLPs on staff. What ends up happening is that Lily Grace falls asleep in the car right at 12:45pm for about 10 minutes, and promptly wakes up when I stop.  We go inside of school, get Christian (who is usually CRAZY tired at this point too), go to the car, where I then proceed to blast Radio Disney in an effort to keep them both awake. If by a miracle Christian stays awake, I then try to get him to nap. Which he usually doesn't. And Lily gets so tired that she starts to get goofy. And by 2pm, the afternoon just implodes and we end up hanging out in the playroom while I attempt to work/do laundry/stay sane. 

Phew.

While I usually spend the 5 minutes during my yoga class on Tuesday mornings that are meant for quiet meditation worrying about Tuesday afternoon insanity, I found myself actually relaxing for a change. Weird. I picked up Lily out of the gym daycare and headed to school, to find Christian with a lollipop (ALWAYS A GOOD SIGN OF GOOD LISTENING!), and our fabulous SLP with a handful of homework assignments. She told me that they have really been working on the soft initial /th/ sound, and he did a fantastic job today working hard and listening to her. We have some exercises to do to work on this sound thanks to Mrs. H who always gives me piles and piles of homework. Hooray for me, the wannabe SLP! 

Other than the word "the", I rarely hear Christian produce this sound correctly. He often substitutes it with the /f/ or /d/ sound. I'm not TOO worried about this sound, since both the vocalized and unvocalized versions of /th/ usually don't come until WAAAY later on, closer to age 7. However, I'm so glad that we're bringing attention to it right now. 


This afternoon isn't as crazy as most Tuesdays. Christian went down for a good nap, and at 10 minutes to 4:00pm, he is still sleeping. Lily, however, was running back and forth in her crib, giggling and then crying for about 40 minutes. My little sidekick is now drawing in her high-chair as I write this. 


Phew.

Working on our /f/ sound

I swear, the /f/ is going to be the end of me. Although according to the Phoneme Acquisiton Data from Sander, I shouldn't be worried. Still, as with all things with Christian, I'm constantly in defense mode.

Here's a couple of things that we've noticed with the /f/ sound in general:

-It IS an emerging sound as he DOES produce in ALL positions. Just not consistently.
-He has trouble producing it as an initial sound if it preceeds a vowel. It often is substituted for a /b/ or /p/ in these cases.
-/f/ in the final position in single syllables is a strength, so we're building on it!

We're way past the whole "scraping frosting/nutella/marshmallow fluff/ of the bottom lip". We've moved onto some great exercises passed onto us by both Christian's school SLP and our new itinerant teacher. One fun exercise that helps build the /f/ in the final position that Christian LOVES uses plastic little spiders from Halloween that I place on his arm. As he says "Off", we flick the bugs off his arm. This really has helped him with correct placement of his top teeth on the lip and his pressure.

We've been working on this for a year. It reminds me of potty training---tedious, but knowing the end result is going be worth the effort.

KNIFE!!!!

Ladies and Gentleman...we have the /F/ Sound!!!!

We've been waiting. We've been working. And yesterday, out of the blue, we had this exchange:

Christian: Mommy, cut my cheese stick please?
Mommy: Buddy, you can just bit it, it's ok.
Christian: Mommy, you use a kniFe to cut it. Please!
Mommy: Seriously, Christian you don't need....OH MY GOSH! OH MY GOSH! SAY IT AGAIN! SAY KNIFE! YOU DID IT! SAY IT AGAIN!

His initial /f/ is still a bit weak...but we're getting there!

GO CHRISTIAN GO!

Mommy Speech Therapy

While I strive for every moment of every day to be a language opportunity for Christian, we still have set "therapy" time. Yesterday, we were working on the initial /f/ sound using the Speech Steps worksheets.

Check out this video I took of him. I intended it to just be a reference point for us to use later to chart his progress, but it showcases my little man's silly personality AND his amazing progress!

*please turn down the music to the right*
*To my D/HOH friends that use captions, I'm working on it! The program I use was disabled last night*

What the /F/?

I'm complete obsessed with the letter /f/ these days. I've been working around the clock and nonstop with Christian on the /f/ sound, and I am Fully Fried.

While not usually acquired until between the ages of 2.5 and 3.5 years, I'm still pushing him, as it's one of the harder sounds for children with hearing loss to master. His /f/ comes out as a /p/ (which is helpful in some cases). We've been working on various oral/motor exercises, like playing with our bottom teeth, and using them to scrape off frosting a pudding from our lips. I've been over-emphasizing the initial /f/ sound, and we've even been using some pages out of this cool workbook to work on the sound.

I'm a little frustrated with all of this because Christian can totally produce the /v/ sound...the /f/ is pretty darn close. And I'm totally blaming this whole /f/ issue on why I can't lose the last 8 pounds of my pregnancy weight. Let's just say we get a lot of practice saying FIVE GUY FRENCH FRIES.