Speech

Spent the day at home with the younger two. For about half an hour I worked out as I would pick up the boys and throw them onto the bed. They would run back for more so I was flipping and tossing them all over the bed. JB is quite the rough and tumble little kid. Jbird stacked up two bean bags and then created a slide with our floor mats. JB would quickly climb up and slide down head first. He has started running at his brothers trying to knock them over. Of course they just love it until someone gets hurt!

Ever since Christmas break, the school district's computers have had a virus and been down over 2 weeks now. They have taken care of the virus but I guess it is taking much longer to rebuild the computer system. Sure is reeking havoc on things. Grades were suppose to be sent home today, they can't check out library books, not able to keep up with everyone's account in the lunchroom, teachers who routinely communicate with their parents can't. Amazing how much we come to rely on computers and how much easier it makes our life. Our teacher actually sent home a hand written note the other day.

JB had another good session with speech therapist today. We have a caseworker through another agency that follows JB's progress and makes sure we get the help we need. She sat in today with JB and the therapist. She was amazed. She said that the therapist makes JB work for everything. If he starts grunting or using inappropriate signs/sounds, she tells him she does not know what he wants. She will only give him one thing at a time to work with (everything else is put up so there are no distractions). She put some crackers in a see through container and made him say more and open before he got any and repeated the sequence several times. She sometimes has to work with him for 20 minutes before it starts to clicks. He is overgeneralizing. When he gets a sign down, he will use that sign for everything. She says his will somewhat plays into the lack of communication but she is starting to wonder if the issue is word association or symbol related. Once things start flowing he does pretty well, but it is trying to get him to connect words with certain signs or sounds. He will use the right sign over and over but then try it the next day, and he can't get it and gets frustrated. She says she still needs more sounds from him for her to be certain of the direction they need to go. I tried the clear container with goldfish crackers. He repeatedly did the sign for 'more', even after watching me several dozen times show him the sign for 'open'. He finally lost interest and threw the container. Sigh..... I also thought it interesting that she said kids at this age should not be shaking their head yes or no like he is...and he almost always uses it appropriately and very intentionally.

A friend is taking the younger two tomorrow while B is in school. I am heading over to a friend's house and at some point we will go have lunch. Hopefully I will still get home early enough to have an hour or two at the house without kids!