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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A Language all His Own

Noah (6 – Down syndrome) was in his happy place yesterday and started talking up a storm.  Okay, so I couldn’t understand what he was saying, but I’m telling you he was talking.  It went something like this:

duh duh     duh duh duh duh duh duh     duh duh duh!!!     Duh duh duh duh     duh duh duh.    Duh duh?   Duh.

All the inflection was there, all the hand gesturing, facial expression.  But just the same sound over and over again.  Apraxia?

I guess that’s babbling of sorts.

It must be good.

I tried talking back to him in his language, but he knew I had an agenda, so he signed stop, just like he always does when he sees I’m trying to pull speech out of him.

He’s got such a sweet voice.

Two New Words In One Week

I dropped Noah off to speech therapy today (I couldn’t stay this time like I usually do) and very excitedly told Miss L, his wonderful speech therapist, he had integrated two new words into his spoken vocabulary since the last time she saw him (a mere 7 days ago).  Since he has an extremely limited spoken vocabulary despite being in heavy duty speech therapy for two years, two words in one week is HUGE!

She was enthusiastic, but I just knew she had to see it for herself.  When she brought him back to me with a scorecard full of stickers, I knew he must have been in a demonstrative mood today.  It was her turn to excitedly tell me how many times he said “no” and “me.”  In the life of a child, those two words are pretty important, don’t you think?

That’s one of the things I LOVE LOVE LOVE about Noah, probably due to his Down syndrome.  He doesn’t mess around.  Talking doesn’t come easy to him, but each word he says is a million bucks kind of word.  He’ll never be a flatterer or a manipulator (with his words at least).  He’ll say what he means and he’ll mean what he says.   And I tell you what, when he talks, people who know him will listen.

Just a run down on the words that he finds valuable enough to articulate without any prompting:

more, cookie, milk, mama, daddy, book and now no and me.  I guess you could call these Noah’s first words.

There may be more, but those are the ones that come to mind.

Don’t feel sorry for us though – he can and does sign without prompting probably 200+ more words and several hundred more with prompting.

He also can verbalize many words in imitation or with prompting, but they haven’t been integrated into his language yet.  But that’s the booger with Down syndrome and apraxia – you think you’ve won the battle when they can finally repeat a new word back to you.  That means they have the coordination, the muscle tone, the air flow, and the cognitive ability to say the word.

Too bad so many of those words stay in the speech therapist’s (or the homeschooling wanna-be speech therapist’s) office.   You may hear your speech therapist talk about carry-over; this is what they are referring to.

So we practice, practice, practice, and we hope that if he repeats the words enough times in a clinical setting, and if they are relevant enough to Noah, they will move into his working vocabulary.  That’s what happened with “no” and “me.”

Okay, two more down, a few thousand more to go.

I’m game.