Use Your Words!

Brody has a full schedule! Since the beginning of December, he has been going to private speech therapy on Mondays and Wednesdays, and he has also been attending an early intervention class on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. I am also interested in taking him to Kindermusic (or a similar program) on one of his "off" mornings, but we'll see about that.

He really does improve almost daily with his sounds and word attempts, but oftentimes we don't realize it since we are with him so much. His therapist is very happy with all the progress he has made so far, and she loves seeing him improve from week to week.

I guess I'll start with some words...before starting speech, Brody could say: Mama, Dada, M&M, yum yum, and wow.

These are the words he can say now fully on his own:

Mama
Dada
M&M
yum yum
wow
yeah (as in yes)
buh bye
night-night (he says nigh nigh)
no
moo moo
baa baa
neigh neigh
whoa
dough
bow
up
uh oh
water (he says wa wa)
poop (LOL!)
poof (that's what he calls a toot, ha ha)
Bumbo (he says buh-bow)
ball
boo
hole
bowl
cracker (he says ca ca)
Tae (his cousin)

I think I might actually be missing a few! After reading a bunch of stories online about kids with apraxia, I have learned that there can be mild cases and very severe cases...for example, one little boy spent a year in therapy and was only able to produce the sound "eh" after all that. And Brody actually has real words now after about a month and a half.

He can say just about any word if we coach him through it. For example, he doesn't say "potty" on his own yet. Last month we would have him repeat each individual sound...puh, ahh, tuh, ee. Now we can put more than one sound together and he will repeat...pah, tee. See the progress? Shortly he should just be able to say the whole word with no prompting. I have had many moments of frustration and have even said, "Seriously, are we going to have to do this for every word in the english language?!?!" And the answer is no...once he starts to "get" it, the words will just come. Some of the words in the list above he did just pick up on his own, so that's very encouraging.

So at home, we do a LOT of work with Brody. He is so good at gesturing and signing that he hasn't felt the need to use words, so we are always encouraging him to use his words or at least make the attempt before we give him anything or do anything for him. We have flashcards that target specific sounds or endings that we work with him on. His therapist recommended getting the Letter Factory and Word Factory DVD's.

These are fabulous...before, Brody said most letter sounds, but they were just random during play and babbling. Now he recognizes every single letter and can say the sound on demand. We will say, "What does a W say?" and he will immediately give the sound. He points out letters everywhere now--commercials, billboards, store fronts, t-shirts, books, etc.--and starts saying the sounds. Though he cannot say the ABC song, he does know the order because in the Letter Factory, each letter has it's own room, and while they're heading out of one room into the next, he is already making the sound of the next letter.

One of the reasons we got Brody a microphone and keep all these old phones around is to encourage him to make sounds and repeat words into them during play.

We definitely have a long way to go before he is speaking like a typical child his age (he should've been at this point about 6-12 months ago), but he has come so far already. I was hoping that he'd have a few words by summer, so you can imagine how happy I am with his progress.

I'll have a separate post about his Tuesday/Thursday class, but I wanted to be able to put some pictures with it so it'll be awhile.