An impromptu speech update.

Yesterday morning we bumped into Monkey’s speech therapist as we were leaving the school.  She stopped us to speak briefly about how wonderfully he is doing these days. 

She is so impressed with all of the new sounds that he is making.  She is most impressed with his newfound willingness to try imitating new sounds.  She said this is particularly key, if he doesn’t want to try there is nothing anyone can do to make him but he’s motivated and clearly wants to master this whole talking thing.

We mentioned the blowing out candles and the counting to her, she said that explained why he suddenly seemed to understand how to, and be able to, blow bubbles at school.  She had noticed exactly what we had.  Prior to the candle practice each night Monkey would make the “sound effect” of blowing without actually blowing.  As cute as it was, he really needed to learn how to push air past his lips to help with his speech.   It’s pretty cool that something as fun and easy as blowing out candles after dinner has turned out to be free “therapy!”  I can see now, in hindsight, how this was a really good approach to take.  It gave him visual proof when he was blowing correctly (the candle went out) and when he was not (the candle stayed lit.)  I wish we could say it was planned, lol, because it’s rather brilliant!

She also had a bit of a puzzle she was trying to work out.  She and Monkey have been reading Are You My Mother? and she couldn’t get Monkey to say “Mama” or “Mommy.”  She knew he had to have a sign or a word for me but he was not sharing, lol.  We told her that he calls me “Umma” and that he does know the sign for “Mama” as well.  Armed with this info she can now try to get him to cooperate a bit more.  She is a very nice and very experienced ST but she does let Monkey get away with more than his other therapists/teachers do and the boy does take advantage.

She also shared that No, David! is his favorite book at school.  She said it was about a naughty little boy and the picture she showed us was of a boy drawing on the walls.  She said he really seems to get the humor.  Given the fact that he recently used a permanent marker to write on Great Grampy’s hot water heater in the basement I’m willing to say that he’s maybe picked up a habit or two from it.  Ahem. 

I’m still going to add it to our library at home, lol.