Sunday, February 20, 2011

Speech, Speech and more Speech...The Apraxia Journey

I have one goal for Noah, one IEP goal, one have to, must have achievement... SPEECH - VERBAL LANGUAGE - COMMUNICATION!!!

In November, 2010 after attending a wonderful seminar about Apraxia, I was able to get Noah in to see the Apraxia specialist, Lynn Carahaly, owner and director of Foundations Development House in Chandler, AZ. I was very excited as I felt that this was going to be the right move for us, even if it is 60 miles round trip 3x a week. My boy will talk!

So, we have seen Lynn now for 14 sessions. One hour session 3x a week. He is making progress!! :-) My boy is actually talking to me! Last week I was leaving the house for an appointment and I said bye Noah, and he replied with "bayee mumm"! (he said bye mom!) ahhh, love it! Then yesterday, I was in the kitchen cooking dinner and he came in wanting me to rewind his favorite song on the video he was watching for the, oh, sixth time, and he continued to say "mooe" while signing more. I told him no, that he had watched that song enough. He then signed and said together, "oowa mooe imme" one more time... I screamed with joy and told him he can watch it as many times as he wants if he asks me with his words like that!!!

This was a silent little man not long ago, and now he can voice his wants and needs. Something else that is new, I can now ask him yes and no questions and he can answer. Ex: we are scrolling through the many recorded Jack's Big Music Show videos and I can ask him "do you want to watch Monster, Marching Band, Coo Coo Bird" and he will answer "yeah, or Nooo" I love it!!!

Below is a video that is combining his 2nd session with Lynn to his 14th session of last week. (2nd is gray shirt, 14th is green shirt)
He is now combining consonant and vowel blends as well as vowel/vowel blends which is a diphthong. So the word "my" is actually a consonant - diphthong. He has to make the consonant sound "mmmm" and combine with the vowel blend of "ahhh-eeee" to create the sound of "eye". Also in the beginning of the word "bounce"... it is a consonant "bbb" combined with a vowel blend of "aaa-oooh" to make that "bou" sound. It's amazing how complicated the human language truly is when you break it down is segments. It just shows you how tenacious one has to be to learn the English language when it doesn't come innately like the rest of the population.
This is just showing the amazing progress that he is making and it is reinforcing the fact that my little man WILL TALK!!!


3 comments:

  1. Oh Raquel, I am sending you a big cyber hug. I know the road you are travelling. Watching Noah's video I could flash back to Sam's younger years and his early journey with speech. We had sounds but not many speech sounds, then like Noah we started to hear words. Now we have words and sentences but we still have a long way to go too. I think speech was one of the areas I prayed on the most. We kept thinking it was just going to happen one day...but now after years I know it is a continuing process. Each word becomes a little clearer, each day I hear more. Our guys have so much to say...sometimes I think it is taking this long because God is making sure I have learned to listen. Hang in there, our boys have a lot to talk to us about.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oh Sue, thank you so much! I love the statement that God is making sure we are ready to listen!
    Thank you for your cyber hug, so gratefully received!!!
    Peace to you my friend, and lots of lots of patience for us all!!! ;-)

    ReplyDelete
  3. He is doing a great progress in a short period of time. This is great. Good Job Noah!

    ReplyDelete