Ian's new speech goals

Well, maybe more correctly it should be Ian's new speech approach.

First off I have to say that I really like his new speech therapist. We are talking a lot about why Ian isn't talking and she's asking me a lot of questions about his speech that I just can't answer. I'm starting to lean toward thinking he has a motor planning problem which means that even though his brain knows what he wants to say, it can't make his mouth say it. Yes he does have some things he says and those are things that his brain has made a plan for, but it's having trouble making new plans or changing incorrect ones (which could be why it took almost a year to get him to call me mama instead of gaga). It could also be why he sometimes loses words. I've been thinking a lot lately and there are words that he gets and uses and then without me really noticing they are gone. But I realized that there are some things that I haven't heard him say in at least a month or more. He kind of does the same thing with signs. It is a little bit more appropriate for him to drop signs as he learns the words, Alison did that and other kids do too. But the problem is that if he drops the sign after learning the word and then drops the word, we don't have any communication for that word anymore.

The new speech therapist has seen him on two of his most uncooperative days. Last week he was sick with a cold, but we talked a lot so that she could start to get to know him and that he could get used to her being here. Today he was all grumpy and out of sorts, he didn't sleep good last night and he's still stuffed up so all the crying and temper tantrums only made his poor nose worse. However, she did notice (quite correctly) that it is really hard to get him to look at you when you're trying to model speech or a sign. He does it even on his good days. He just won't look at my face and the words I'm saying to him.

So her idea was to focus for this week on just getting him to look at me. She would let him play awhile, then take the toy and hold it up by her face and as soon as he looked at her, she would say the word, thank him for looking at her and give the toy right back. He didn't much like her taking his toy away, but he did start to get the idea that he'd get it back if he looked at her. This week we aren't going to expect him to try to say the word (he won't repeat words most of the time anyway), we are just teaching him to pay attention to our faces.

A little after she left it was time for him to eat, so I thought I'd try to work on him looking at my face to get more food. He knew exactly what I wanted him to do, but he was being stubborn about it. Once he turned his face right to mine and shut his eyes up tight, then opened them and laughed at me. The thing is, he has no trouble with eye contact during play or when we are doing other things, it's just when I want him to look at me when we are working on his speech that he resists it so much.

I decided too to start keeping a speech notebook. She asks so many questions that are hard to answer, it seems like they shouldn't be, but when I'm in the day to day workings of being with him, I forget to step back and take an outside view. I think the notebook will help me be more mindful of exactly what is going on and will help me remember things.