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.