Category Archives: Speech Therapy

All I want for Christmas – part 2

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Here is part two of  Christmas ideas for Henry. These are focused more on sensory and fine motor learning.

Gigglator… sounds fun and I’ve never heard of this toy.  Kids can record their voices or select any of the 12 prerecorded sound effects. Then they simply roll, slide or shake to change its pitch and make hilarious sounds.  I think it will be a great motivator for sound production during home speech therapy

Screw Block… this is a compact alternative to getting Henry a whole tool bench with accessories.  This seems like a good compromise.  ’Simple, effective manipulative refines hand eye coordination, fine motor and color matching skills’

Touch and Match Board.. a new kind of matching board, this one is by touch.. .rough, smooth, squishy. Great for tactile and sensory needs…

Below, CooCoo. Don’t let CooCoo drop the ball.  CooCoo wil help your child to get a sense of gravity along with a sense of observation. It also develops hand eye coordination and dexterity

Snakey Skill Building. I was looking for a doll or toy that helped Henry with some of his adaptive skills like dressing.. snapping, zipping etc. He’s so interested right now but having some difficulties. There are a lot of dolls out there with mixed reviews, and most don’t include a lace up feature. This one does. And I like how you have to make the connections to put the snake together. I think it makes it more interesting for him.

Egg and Spoon Race… Silly and fun. Really probably meant for parties, but I think this will be good indoor fun this winter. Plus it will work on balance and hand eye coordination.  Simply balance your egg on the spoon and race to the finish line without dropping it. Be careful – if you drop your egg, it will crack!

Dado Bricks. Henry loves big cardboard blocks they have at his preschool. I liked these because it takes them one step further because they lock together. I think I may order two sets… we can build forts!interlocking stars pretty self explanatory..I like how they snap together

textured tangle.. this could be fun in the car or just to keep Henry’s little hands busy. I like the different textures. It can be used as more of a puzzle as he gets olderRapper snappers He loved these during his therapy at the Kaufman Clinic.  They pop together and you can compact them or stretch them. They make fun sounds and you can link them together. Great for imaginative play.

snap bags I think Henry will really like the weight of these, he enjoys heavy things. Also the snapping part will be fun for him. He can make different shapes or chains/snakes. And we can use it for color/number learning and even as bean bags for our bean bag toss.Button Art This will be great for color matching and again he loves pushing things out and hearing that satisfying “snap”! Should be fun

a few products I like for home speech therapy…

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Like most parents with children with apraxia, there is “homework” to be done with your little one to help his/her speech along. My goal was to make it different from speech therapy and for it to be cleverly disguised as play. Henry likes flashcards luckily, but he lately I can tell he feels the cards are “work” and he’s less apt to stay tuned in for longer periods.  So I’m always on the look out for fun toys…speech related or otherwise…that will provoke more sounds out of Henry. I will share these as I find them, but these are oldies but goodies. I think they are especially great with the younger set.

These microphones are great…they have no batteries and basically just provide a loud echo. You can find them anywhere from Walmart, to Old Navy all the way to higher priced stores. Don’t pay over $5 or you have paid too much. This one is from Lake Shore Learning.

This is a speech phone. It has a similar function to the above microphone, but is just another fun way for your little one to hear their own voice. Sometimes we are pretending to talk on the phone as above, or pretending we are rock stars “singing” in our microphones. It’s all about making it fun, and in Henry’s case he liked hearing his own voice so these were both good motivators for speech. These phones are widely available as well and inexpensive, I found this one on The Talking Child

Whistles are great tools as well. They work on oral motor skills, respiratory skills and plus they are just plain fun. The child gets a result for his/ her efforts and they enjoy the different sounds. I purchases a set similar to above… you can buy them separately too and find all kinds of whistles just about anywhere. Henry liked the train whistles because he was fascinated with trains at the time. Find what drives your little one and gear your toys towards his/her particular likes.
I found this set on The Talking Child 

Carry the whistle fun over to bathtime! I love these from Alex toys. You can great different depths of sound depending on how much water you put in the tube. They even come with sheet music! You just have to be careful to drain these and keep them super clean. I found these on Amazon.com, they are called Alex tub tunes water flutes

We noticed early on that Henry loved to look at himself in the mirror…most kids do. Mirrors are a great tool to help kids see how they are moving their lips and tongues during speech practice. They may also be more likely to watch your mouth and face during speech if they are looking at you in a fun mirror. While any mirror will do of course, we used a mirror we had from when Henry was a baby, similar to this one from Sassy. I liked it because I could make it stand on any surface where we were working and we could take it with us. We still use his bathroom and bedroom mirror for these kind of exercises, but there are so many fun ones out there that you could use it for motivation as well. Some light up and play music for instance. After your child makes an attempt at a sound or word  you can make the mirror light up or play music!

As mentioned in a previous post, Occupational therapy has played a huge role in Henry’s improvements. A friend mentioned how an at home trampoline really helped bring out her son’s speech. Of course I ran out an bought one and was amazed at the results our EI OT had working with Henry on a trampoline. We later learned also that Henry seeks out and needs a lot of proprioceptive input and trampolines are great for that. I found this one from Pure Fun on Amazon. I did a lot of research and read a lot of reviews before settling on this one. I liked the higher weight limit so I could get on with Henry sometimes and it could be used by the whole family. It also was rated well for safety and durability.

Please know that when I make product suggestions, there is nothing “in it for me” so to speak. I have no affiliation with the companies that make these products and I’m not officially endorsing them. They are just things I use at home that I thought would be useful to others. Enjoy!

Kaufman – Day 3

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This was our best day so far! Just when you think Henry must be plateauing, he surprises you again. Two syllable words… three word phrases. Granted these are approximations, but we could understand him and it’s the most we’ve heard from him ever! It’s really all too much to digest and even write down!  I will have to go over the videos when we receive them and take better notes. It’s so hard to do when you are enthralled with watching everything taking place and hearing words for the very first time.

After our first session with Nancy this morning, she called me in to talk and she said, “I just want to tell you that Henry is going to be just fine”.  I knew this of course on some level and that it would be fine in some undetermined amount of time, but it was all so abstract. Hearing these words from an expert really resonated.  This was the best news and it felt like a weight was off of my shoulders. I know there is still so much therapy and hard work at home ahead, for likely years, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel and it’s so good to hear!  Further she said that we are in such a great place because Henry doesn’t have a major co-existing condition (like autism), that he pays attention, he’s eager to learn and he’s smart as a whip. And of course he’s cute as a button! :) His personality and his ability to learn so quickly makes him an awesome candidate for the Kaufman technique, and all of these characteristics will mean great progress. She couldn’t say when he would catch up, but she feels extremely positive about him and is so happy that he is there. She even is considering using some of his therapy tapes for teaching purposes.  She asked me if I remembered when I was at her conference in April and she showed a video of a little boy very similar to Henry… and then showed a tape of him when he was 18.  This young man was going to Tufts University (?) at the time, you could barely tell when he spoke that he ever had apraxia, and he also learned two to three different languages!!   She said, “that’s Henry!”. It made me so happy.  I remember watching the video of that boy, then Henry had just turned two, and I hoped we would be so lucky.

We talked more about what we can do at home and she suggested making him a book of his favorite things. This would be a binder with photos of his actual objects, not generic photos, and then I would write his approximations on these photos so we can work on some of his favorite functional words.

Then we went off to OT with Amy again, this time in a different room… to “space camp’! Here Amy really wanted to test his vestibular functions. She sat him on a balance board that spun on a lazy Susan. For a vestibular system to be working properly they look for eye movement/bouncing for 7-10 seconds after ten consecutive spins. Well Henry put his foot down to stop the spinning after three turns and after completing the ten turns there was no eye bouncing. She said his vestibular system is over responsive, but that he is getting some sensory input because his cheeks were flushed. She said that after vestibular activity that squishing him (think Henry sandwich), wrapping him tightly in a blanket, or even blowing a horn or whistle just might possibly head off his tremors. If not, even so it will make him feel more grounded and less uneasy about the feeling he has after these kind of activities. Amy is great and will be giving us a lot of information and exercises to work on at home. Another successful day!!!!

What?? Good news from the insurance company?? Can it be?

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It’s shocking. I spend a lot of time cursing Blue Cross Blue Shield and health insurance companies in general.  But shockingly enough I got a tidbit of good news today from our SLP!!

After finding out Henry may need additional OT outside of early intervention as well as PT, I freaked out. As it is, we only get 45 visits per year, and OT, PT and Speech are all under that 45 visit umbrella. We also have to beg for 8 or so visits to be approved at a time within that 45 count.

My SLP said some insurance companies count a day as a visit…as in he could have PT, OT and Speech in one place on  the same day and it would count as one and not three. (of course there are still 3 separate $25 copays that add up, but it’s better than $180 a session). This sounded too good to be true, I mean, this is BCBS we are talking about here… but she looked into it and we qualify for that option! Awesome!!!!  Now we just need them to approve it…I already see appeals in my future! I’m ready!

Vestibular Dysfunction… add it to the list!

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Just when I think I have a handle on what we are dealing with with Henry, I get thrown another curve ball. I really thought after all of these months of research and endless conversations that I sort of had things figured out…at least for now.

I had an informal evaluation done with a PT at the clinic where Henry gets some private speech. The SLP had noticed that Henry had a strange gait, and of course motor planning issues and she wanted someone else to step in and take a look. We have OT through early intervention but an additional eye on the situation is always a good idea. Of course I used it as an opportunity to pick her brain on other things.

This started with our SLP giving her an overall history on Henry. Then she spent about 20 min or so observing Henry, watching him run and do other activities. The motor planning issues were obvious…difficulty figuring out how to get on and off a chair and other objects. Then she mentioned low muscle tone in his core area. I have heard of low muscle tone in apraxic children, but never really thought Henry was a classic case. He did use to have an open mouth position constantly and things like that, but that has improved with OT. I guess she could tell by his techniques in getting off the floor and maneuvering himself in general. He compensates with his arms and legs, and overall stance where if his core were stronger he wouldn’t have to.

She also said he is very flat footed, his left more than his right and that his feet are pronated and his toes point out when he walks. I have been noticing this lately trying on shoes and having him run around. It’s the first time I  have really been noticing that myself.  I have a hell of time finding shoes that work for him. They have to really curve up off the ground at the toe or he falls on his face every five minutes. Even then, sometimes he just can’t walk in a shoe and I can’t really figure out why. Usually the ugliest ones work the best ;)

We covered his sensory seeking behaviors, and I also discussed with her some of his other issues including his tremors after certain activities or during fine motor movements. She’s attributing this to a vestibular issue. This idea has gotten tossed around by some nice people I have talked to online and it makes sense with some things I have read in books.

They are suggesting a PT and an OT evaluation. I never imagined Henry would need PT too… add it to the list I guess.. here we go…

Donna Lederman seminar

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My husband and I were lucky enough to attend a conference sponsored by CASANA at the University of Harford. It was geared towards parents and run by Donna Lederman. She is a very experienced SLP, especially in the world of CAS, and operates her office out of Long Island, NY.  She uses the prompt method for treatment.

It was about an hour and half long and included a power point presentation describing the symptoms of CAS and the difficulties in diagnosing it. She also contrasted it with Severe Phonological Disorder and discussed how these diagnosis sometimes overlap.

She showed several videos of her therapy sessions and I was most impressed at how attentive her patients were, especially her youngest ones… as young as two. They said calmly in their chairs, paying attention to her mouth movements, and attempting to imitate words at her request. They were also receptive to all of the direct physical contact used with the prompt technique.  She was great at keeping them interested with unique toys and games and carried a few words through the entire session, but used in different contexts.  For instance, if she was working on the word “balloon”, that word would pop up again further along in the session, but in relation perhaps to a different story or game and as  “yellow balloon”, “balloon pop”, balloon up”, “my balloon”.

She also contrasted some younger patients with some older children that didn’t come into her practice until they were much older. One I believe was 8 or 9. It was heartbreaking to see this boy who had a language all his own that now one could understand. And it was obvious he desperately wanted to be understood and tried so hard. She made tremendous progress with him and it’s always gratifying to see the before and after videos. It also made me glad we started Henry so young and not everyone is so fortunate.

The only downside to the seminar is that in my opinion is that it was way too short. I would say there were about 30 people there, all parents and some came as couples. The common thread was that we were all desperate for information, had questions and wanted answers. There was a brief question/answer session, but it just couldn’t accommodate everyone. I would have also liked to have more time to socialize with the other parents, maybe with refreshments or something afterward. It just wasn’t set up for that and I felt like we were almost being rushed out. It was evening time, maybe the building was closing? I’m not sure, but I do know it is so valuable to me to be in the same room as an expert as well as being surrounded by other parents going through the same things  as I am. I wish I could have taken better advantage of that.

Overall, it was very informative and Donna Lederman is wonderful and gracious. I wish I lived in Long Island so she could treat Henry! Thanks to CASANA for putting this on and making it an affordable option for parents.  Ms. Lederman’s website is very informative and geared towards helping parents, even if you are not a client. I suggest checking it out:

http://www.donnalederman.com/