The Weekly Review: Week 57

SLP Idea of the Week

Land of Nod sells a wooden tic-tac-toe board (which I do not own). I think the board looks beautiful and appears to be sturdy. I also think you could cut my printable speech cards to size and put them in the holes and then have the children play speech tic-tac-toe. You could also draw a tic-tac-toe grid and just deal a card into each of the nine spots and play speech tic-tac-toe without purchasing the beautiful wooden playing board. I wonder if my three and four year old children could play the game?

Favorite Blog Post This Week

One of my absolute favorite blogs to read is Swistle. She consistently writes well thought out posts about topics I find interesting and just seems to be a genuinely good person. This week she wrote about children and swearing (the little swear words like "hate", "stupid", and "sucks") which fortunately aren't much of an issue yet for me. I liked her idea that using them is a privilege based upon the user's ability and wisdom to use them in moderation, appropriately, in certain settings, with specific audiences (not in front of small children, or in front of grandparents for example). That gets around the do as I say, but not as I do contradiction most people get into when they simply forbid the use of such words. Anyway, it was a well thought out post and you should check it out if it interests you.

Ava this Week

Ava's really perfected crocodile tears this week and oh-my-gosh is it driving me crazy. At first, she only used them when she got a minor scrape or bump, or during small altercations with her brother and so it wasn't immediately obvious that the crying was completely fake. So I reinforced it with lots of snuggles and hugs and by immediately fixing her problem. From her point of view, this was great. So then she moved on to bursting into sobs every time I tell her no.

For example, yesterday morning I put her hair in a ponytail. Once we were done she asked if I had done a braid and when I said no she started sobbing. The performance included real tears. She hadn't even actually asked for a braid and I hadn't actually told her no. I told her I wasn't even going to listen until she stopped crying and asked nicely. And then I left the room. It took her a minute to turn the tears back off. She asked nicely and then got her braid. I feel a bit mean and heartless walking away from my sobbing 3 year old, but I will not reinforce that behavior any more. She's also taken to responding to simple requests (please put on your shoes) with a simple, one word, reply: "no". I'm nipping that one in the bud too. Fun times in Avaland lately.

Weekly Michael

Ahh how the behavioral tides rise and fall in this house (read - currently rising). Michael is experimenting to find out what level of snarkiness (mild backtalk) will be tolerated. Fortunately he isn't pushing too hard. A relatively mild redirection usually works. He'll say something slightly rude. I'll tell him that wasn't an acceptable way of talking in our house and model a more appropriate alternative and he'll correct himself. Gotta love experimentation.

Ava's and Michael's Weekly Home Therapy Notes

Other than our nightly readings of the articulation practice booklets there has been little structured speech practice this week. I've been solo parenting in the evenings all week due to a huge work thing going on for my husband and so I've been taking it easy in the evenings with the kids.

Weekly Homeschooling

We're working with math, handwriting, and reading. We get in about two 20 minute lessons during an at-home morning (M, W, F). So Monday we did math and reading. Wednesday we did handwriting and math. Today we'll do reading and handwriting. I call the lessons "special activities". We do one activity. Then the children go off and play a while. Then I call them back for the second activity. We fit in breakfast, lunch, outside time, and other random projects in too so the morning flies by.