A Moment in His World

I’ve been concerned lately at Noah’s growing frustration and lack of cooperation.  Most attempts by me to work with him on refining his speech is met by resistance.  He is starting to be noncompliant in our school time, and I’m just sensing barriers going up any time I push him towards doing anything remotely academic or speech related.

The thing that bothers me the most is his aversion to making eye contact with me when he knows I’m trying to work with him.  Am I pushing too hard?

Probably.

But I can’t just let him stay where he’s at.  I mean, it’s my job to push him to do great things, right?

No answers here, but I did enjoy a few minutes with him yesterday evening.

I met him where he was at.  And he let me stay awhile.

Noah was sitting on the couch looking at a book.  (YAY!)

I walked in the room and without saying a word, I was able to attract his attention.  I signed to him without saying a word that I wanted him to come with me so I could brush his teeth.

He signed back – “YOU come HERE!”

So we went back and forth a few times playfully signing “You come here,” and “No, you come here.”

But I really did need to brush his teeth, so I cozied up to him on the couch.  By this time he was laughing.

I signed “You ride.”

That got his attention.  So I gave him a piggy back ride to the bathroom.

Mind you, it is VERY unusual for us to use sign language without at least me saying the word out loud too.  But this communication exchange we had was totally silent, and boy did I have his attention!

So we got to the bathroom and continued our silent game, and I lived for a few minutes in a Noah-controlled world where no speech was necessary.

Magic.  Absolute magic.

After a bit Noah caught on I was up to something, so he reverted back into his uncooperative self, but I had him for a few precious minutes, and oh, the fun we had!  What a blessing to hear Noah laugh and laugh and laugh.

There is something special that happens when you and your child look into each others eyes and use language other than speech to communicate.  It doesn’t have to be formal sign language.  There’s a lot you can communicate just by gestures.

Try it.  Even if your child doesn’t have a speech delay, try making a game out of communicating without the spoken word.  I often see the spoken word as a key to the world around Noah, but that spoken word can also be a barrier.

Hearts know no words, but they know each other.

 

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Noah’s Courage – Words and More Words

Anybody hungry for a What’s Noah Doing Now update?

Well, for starters, apparently he’s been more cooperative in his PROMPT speech therapy lately.  I can’t tell for sure, because I’ve been sitting out

Sitting out?  Yes, you heard me right.

I know, I know, totally unlike me, right?

Long story.

But I can tell you this:  Noah has added several new words to his vocabulary in the last few weeks.  Most importantly, he has made HUGE progress in being able to access on command all those wonderful sounds he can make.  Before we started PROMPT therapy, I knew Noah could actually form almost all the phonemes, but he just couldn’t do it when he wanted to.  In other words, when we would drill using our Lingraphica Phonemes (free) app https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/smalltalk-phonemes/id384170714?mt=8, Noah could say those sounds.  But later if I gave him a banana and said “say buh,” he often would concentrate, purse his lips and say “puh” or “tuh” or “muh” or even “puh-tuh” and very quickly get frustrated because the sound he had in his head was not the sound that was coming out of his mouth.  When I would repeat “buh,” he would go to a new sound, but it still wouldn’t be “buh.”  If I said “buh, buh, buh, buh,” he often then could say “buh.”  But then go back to banana and have him try to say “buh,” and he would often be unable to.

Very apraxia-ish, eh?

Currently, Noah usually is able to repeat any phoneme I give him on the first or second try, and if he does wind up going down a list of sounds, eventually he is arriving at the right one.  HUGE progress!

Some words that have popped out of my little guy’s mouth lately with prompting (not always pronounced exactly right, but syllables in the right place and main sounds made) – turtle, teeth, cake, bunny, money, candy, boom, and boot.

I’ve also been doing some auditory bombardment with Noah.  I actually don’t have much faith in auditory bombardment in Noah’s case since a huge piece of his issue is oral motor dysfunction, but I have to say I’ve seen him progress greatly over the past few weeks.  I have a sheet of 16 PECs with words like bag, boat, bone, bug, bat, etc.  At first, I just read the words off without even having  him look at the paper.  After a few days of that, I sat him in my lap and used hand-over-hand assistance to have him point to the words as I read them.  Next I said each word and waited for him to say them after me.  As soon as he started resisting, I reverted back to letting him point while I said the words.  Now I say the word and point to it, and he automatically says the word back to me.  So, let’s hear it for auditory bombardment!  (Technically, auditory bombardment uses repetitions of the same words in one session – I did the slacker version – just one but sometimes two runs per session.)  So he can now say about 12 of those 16 words as well.

The big question here is will Noah integrate these new words into daily usage.  “Carryover” is a huge issue in speech therapy, especially in kids with Down syndrome.  It’s great that they can pronounce words on cue, but if those words never make it into their working vocabulary, all that hard work really isn’t doing them any good.  I can report that Noah is using some of these new words.  He is using nana (for banana), teeth, iPad, candy and bear at times without any prompting.  He’s also got some good approximations for “Caelie, Trinity, Abby and Leah.”  I’m probably forgetting a bunch here, but it’s safe to say Noah is still not a very talkative fellow.

My favorite thing that Noah is doing?  He’s been going up to his siblings and tickling them and making a new sound along the lines of “tickle, tickle, tickle.”

Oh, and get this – he’s had about enough of me putting my hands on his face to reinforce the PROMPT tactile cueing he’s getting in therapy.  I make him SOOOO mad.  I think for now I better let Marcus work his PROMPT magic on Tuesdays and I’ll do some hands-off coaching during the other days of the week.

The Boy Loves Proving Me Wrong

Guess who got himself dressed today all the way down to his underwear with nothing but a little up-front verbal prompting from Mom?

He even picked out all his clothes himself.

And to think, just last week I was commiserating about how he’s mastered helping himself to cereal at odd hours of the day when he can’t even put his own underwear on.

All the other kids were at the table eating breakfast, and I went to join them after I saw that he had gotten his nightshirt off and was starting to put his day clothes on.  Next thing I knew he was fully dressed with a big smile on his face, ready to eat.

Think there’s a connection?

The Carb King rides again.

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