It's been too long!!

I didn't keep up with this blog as much as I wanted to. Sorry! Ben has progressed extremely well in the past few years. Between private & public therapy, his last official progress report had him going from 10% intelligable to 90%. He stopped public school therapy last fall & we've been going privately only. Currently, his private therapist is ready to end therapy all together. Which, sounds great b/c he's come so far...however I feel we are just not done yet. He still has trouble with sentences (you'll hear in the video below how he doesn't pronounce words while talking in sentences - like the word "letting") & often reverts back to old speech patterns. With a reminder to use "careful talking" as we call it, he can repeat it better. However, I am currently seeking a second opinion before he is just "done" altogether. Nonetheless, we are very excited at the progress he has made over the last few years. Here is a recent video of him. One I wanted to share anyway with family of Ben praying. :)

Practicing words on the boat

Corey's Day on The Farm

We had a blast at Corey's Day on the Farm. This is a free event for special needs children.
http://www.shoplocalbiz.com/silverdale/coleta/coreysday.htm

Ben got to ride a horse (3 times), learn how to rope a bull, ride a wagon, and pet llama's, baby goats, ducks, chicks, bunnies.

Here is Ben getting on a horse for the first time!

We met up with his SLP

Ben was asked to ride up front & steer the horses!

I hope we get to go again next year!

Progress Report

We started with a new (private) therapist a couple weeks ago. So we're now going 3 times a week for therapy. Ben has started to not want to go anymore. This morning he didn't want to get out of the car to go in. But eventually he did! This is the second time this has happened. It's hard having people in your face saying "fffffff" suck your lip under, put your teeth on your lip -"fffffff"
The "F" sound is really hard for him, but he does it for me at home much easier than he does at speech...so we'll keep working on it.
Today as speech with the school, the therapist wanted to work on his food issues. She brought strawberries & whipped cream. She had him pick one out, touch it, then gave him a small knife to cut it in half. She handed one to me, and she got one too... Ben started to look around and figured out she was trying to get him to eat it and he said "no!!" multiple times & wanted nothing to do with it. (He used to eat strawberries blended up). She thinks he definately has some oral sensory problems. We are going to make an appointment with the pediatrician to see if we could add some ocupational therapy in as well. The private therapist hasn't had much experience with oral sensory issues - which is disappointing...but she's willing to try some things with him.
Ben is making more of an effort to make his sounds understandable. He's really got the ending "ck, s, t, b, and almost has the sh" sound. But both my husband and I have been able to understand his sentences more. I think Ben will be glad to have a break for summer with the school therapist. Then we will just be going once a week privately. I'm hoping as he continues to get older, he'll be able to sit longer & cooperate! Sometimes it seems the more silly games during therapy , the more they loose him & he doesn't want to stop being silly. A more no-nonsense approach seems to be doing better. But I'm glad both therapist are willing to shift gears during therapy to get the best out of him. I'll try to post some videos later.

http://www.youtube.com/user/ApraxiaKids

Words

Ben had slowly started a list of words in therapy. These are what the speech therapist & I came up with based on the ending sounds & words he used often at home. Before therapy, Ben never said these with the ending sounds. From much repetition in therapy, Ben is now able to say all of them (except backpack) very well. The words are: Mop, hop, guitar, book, game, puppy, panda, backpack, and cup.

We have new words that the therapist added for us to work on:

hot, pop, night, day, bee, me, key, pee, tea, bye, my, pie, tie, boy, toy, ed, add, oat, cow, guy, bay, day, may , pay, kay, bow, toe, go dough, eat , ate, at, do, boo, car, we , up, ape, it, two, eight.

I'll try to get more of those on video another day. The school therapist uses Pam Marshalla material. She is based in Seattle and considered one expert on apraxia. Her idea is to work on vowel sounds mostly. So each therapy session, the therapist has Ben say all the vowels, in their long & short variations & then she puts too together.. like short a - i .

Every expert has their theory. There is The Kaufmann method, Prompt, Pam Marshalla.. That's all I really know of. I'm very interested in the Kaufmann method - it seems to make the most sense.. break down a word, then build it back up thru lots of repetition. Get them to say the first part of the word, then add on each part, until they can say it all together. I don't know much about Prompt yet. Really though, whatever gets Ben talking in a positive way is what we'll go with.

Small, but Wonderful Improvements

This was our 6th week in therapy with the school SLP. She focuses on getting him to say certain words correctly. So far they all end in a "p" or a "t" . One of the first words was "Cup." Ben always said it as "Cu" , completely negating the end sound. So during therapy she kept repeating the "pah" in P. So then he started pronouncing it "cupah" which was fine, at least he was getting the "p" sound in there & she would work to refine the "pah" later. So at home, it was "cupah" . This lasted for a few weeks. But last week, I asked him if he drank all his water & he said "ya, dwa waw ouw my cup" and his cup word sounded beautiful!!
We've been reading "Hop on Pop" a lot lately, as other words from his speech list on in that book. He says "cup, pup, pop, hop," all perfectly. Now sometimes when he gets going in a sentence, he might revert back to dropping the ending sound.. but for the most part , he's getting it!
The school therapist was very pleased with his progress, especially at last weeks session. He opened his mouth beatifully & showed her how good his "p" sound is! He's also improving his "t" sound, but it still needs some work.
I'm grateful for the progress he's made thus far. I think he is starting to understand that he isn't understandable. As I've been doing these videos of him talking (& there are a lot more that I just haven't added on this page), he is very interested in listening to himself. When I show him the video, he looks a little puzzled. Almost as if, he's thinking "that's how I sound?" Because with apraxia , they know what they are saying or want to say.
Another positive note, I finally have a private therapy evaluation at the end of the month.