Thursday, February 10, 2011
Cribless
This past weekend we converted Ava's crib to a toddler bed. Our household is now officially cribless.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Book Review – The Big Book of Exclamations
Quick Disclaimer – I bought this book myself from Amazon and am not being compensated in any way for this review.
This is a review of The Big Book of Exclamations by Teri K. Peterson with illustrations by Chris McAllister. I found this book because it is one of the first books to come up when you do a search for “apraxia” at Amazon.com. This book is not a parent resource in the way that The Late Talker was.
This book is meant to be “read” with your child. I put the word “read” in quotes, because the book is not a storybook. It is designed to teach you how to use a picture book to prompt speech, and lots of it, from your child. This teaches you to interact with a child and a book the same way I was taught to do it as a speech-pathologist during a therapy session. You can then apply the same concepts to any other picture books you are reading with your child. The idea is to spend five or ten minutes (or even longer) on each two-page spread. You don’t need to read the entire book in one sitting. It’s about the two of you enjoying the book, pictures, and conversation. It’s about your child having fun talking about the book. Literally – talking about the book. How often does your child get to do that? You can easily adjust the difficulty level up or down just by modifying what you say from two words at a time to one word at a time. Or from a word like “baby” changed to “be be”. You want to model the exclamations yourself and then pause to let your child participate too. Encourage it. Play with it. Laugh at the silly things the characters are doing and the silly things your child gets to say. Have fun telling the dog, “no no” over and over again.
Why then, did I buy the book if I already know how to interact with a child and a book in this way? Well, because this book is dense. Each two-page spread is crammed full of tons on things to talk to your child about. The pictures and concepts covered are perfect for an emergent talker. I wanted the pictures. They’re great.
Let’s talk about them in more detail. First, you can see a sample page here at the book’s website. Ok. The book begins with two two-page spreads on how to use the book. However, the true beauty of the book emerges in the following six two-page spreads.
At the end of the book the author includes two additional two-page informational spreads. The first is about typical language development and the second is about what to do if you have concerns.
When I tried it with Ava she loved it. She was engaged by the picture on the cover of the book and we spent several minutes just talking about the cover. The book worked exactly as described. We spent a half hour or so on the first three two-page spreads. She did get antsy after the first couple of pages. It’s not like a storybook that hold their attention because they like the story itself. It’s more of an interactive activity. I would plan on using the book for no more than 15-20 minutes at a time. It would certainly be worth it even if you were only using it 5-10 minutes at a time. Pick it up, talk about a couple of pages and then put it away and save the next set of pages for the next day.
I hesitated to buy this book because I thought $20 was a bit steep given that I already know how to read this way with my children. The content is definitely worth the price of admission though. I’ll use this book happily with Ava as often as she’s interested. I would also use it in therapy sessions with any child in the 12 month – 2 ½ year age range and perhaps even with children older than that where appropriate.
I have one small criticism though. This is a book meant to be read with a very young child cuddled in your lap engaging with the book. Yet it is a hardback book with paper pages and is rather large and unwieldy. Also, some of the illustrations disappear into the binding. I found it a little difficult and uncomfortable to hold when reading it with Ava. I wish the book were available in a ¾-size board book form. I would actually pay $5 or $10 additional dollars to get the book in that format and consider it an investment.
This book was not available through my local library system. I’ll admit that I did not check out local bookstores. Amazon does however, carry the book and so you can find it there for sure if you are interested.
Bottom line: Highly recommended.
This is a review of The Big Book of Exclamations by Teri K. Peterson with illustrations by Chris McAllister. I found this book because it is one of the first books to come up when you do a search for “apraxia” at Amazon.com. This book is not a parent resource in the way that The Late Talker was.
This book is meant to be “read” with your child. I put the word “read” in quotes, because the book is not a storybook. It is designed to teach you how to use a picture book to prompt speech, and lots of it, from your child. This teaches you to interact with a child and a book the same way I was taught to do it as a speech-pathologist during a therapy session. You can then apply the same concepts to any other picture books you are reading with your child. The idea is to spend five or ten minutes (or even longer) on each two-page spread. You don’t need to read the entire book in one sitting. It’s about the two of you enjoying the book, pictures, and conversation. It’s about your child having fun talking about the book. Literally – talking about the book. How often does your child get to do that? You can easily adjust the difficulty level up or down just by modifying what you say from two words at a time to one word at a time. Or from a word like “baby” changed to “be be”. You want to model the exclamations yourself and then pause to let your child participate too. Encourage it. Play with it. Laugh at the silly things the characters are doing and the silly things your child gets to say. Have fun telling the dog, “no no” over and over again.
Why then, did I buy the book if I already know how to interact with a child and a book in this way? Well, because this book is dense. Each two-page spread is crammed full of tons on things to talk to your child about. The pictures and concepts covered are perfect for an emergent talker. I wanted the pictures. They’re great.
Let’s talk about them in more detail. First, you can see a sample page here at the book’s website. Ok. The book begins with two two-page spreads on how to use the book. However, the true beauty of the book emerges in the following six two-page spreads.
- Wake Up! Good Morning! This scene has a mommy and daddy entering a nursery with a toddler aged boy and toddler aged girl to wake them up in the morning. There’s a pet dog and cat in the scene along with lots of nursery toys including cars, blocks, planes, and farm animals. The pictures have captions in key areas prompting you (the parent) to use key words like, “Hi, baby”, “beep, beep”, “uh-oh,” and “no no”.
- Eat! Eat! This scene is of the family getting ready for breakfast. You have the mama, daddy, children and pets again and now you add a grandma. Again, there is lots going on here. You have all the items typically present in a kitchen, some playground equipment out a window, fruit on the counter, and much more. Captions include, “hot, hot”, “all done”, please”, and “dirty”.
- Ready to Go! This scene shows the family in the foyer getting ready to go out. All of the previously introduced family members are present and now we add grandpa. In addition to the typical things you’d see in such a scene like a door, stroller, stairway, side table, phone, pictures in frames you have lots of action. Captions include, “bye, bye”, “wait, wait”, Dada help”, and “run, run”.
- The Park! This scene shows the entire family at the playground. You have a slide, swing, bubbles, people playing ball and Frisbee, and even a birthday party going on in the background. Captions include, “swing, swing”, “up up up”, “pop pop pop”, and “weeeeee”.
- Bath Time! Wash! Wash! This scene shows the mama and daddy giving the children a bubble bath. It’s a great bathroom scene. Captions include, “oh, oh, duckie”, “owie, “no bite”, “pop”, and “sh- sh- shhh”.
- Bedtime – Goodnight This scene shows the entire extended family again in the nursery getting the children ready for bed. You’ve got a bedtime story, dim lights and the moon shining in through the window. Captions include, “shhhh- papa stay”, “stop”, “look, my book”, and “ni ni dada”.
- The final page is a picture of the family waving good-bye to the readers and the page opposite is full of captions about being all done and wanting to read again.
At the end of the book the author includes two additional two-page informational spreads. The first is about typical language development and the second is about what to do if you have concerns.
When I tried it with Ava she loved it. She was engaged by the picture on the cover of the book and we spent several minutes just talking about the cover. The book worked exactly as described. We spent a half hour or so on the first three two-page spreads. She did get antsy after the first couple of pages. It’s not like a storybook that hold their attention because they like the story itself. It’s more of an interactive activity. I would plan on using the book for no more than 15-20 minutes at a time. It would certainly be worth it even if you were only using it 5-10 minutes at a time. Pick it up, talk about a couple of pages and then put it away and save the next set of pages for the next day.
I hesitated to buy this book because I thought $20 was a bit steep given that I already know how to read this way with my children. The content is definitely worth the price of admission though. I’ll use this book happily with Ava as often as she’s interested. I would also use it in therapy sessions with any child in the 12 month – 2 ½ year age range and perhaps even with children older than that where appropriate.
I have one small criticism though. This is a book meant to be read with a very young child cuddled in your lap engaging with the book. Yet it is a hardback book with paper pages and is rather large and unwieldy. Also, some of the illustrations disappear into the binding. I found it a little difficult and uncomfortable to hold when reading it with Ava. I wish the book were available in a ¾-size board book form. I would actually pay $5 or $10 additional dollars to get the book in that format and consider it an investment.
This book was not available through my local library system. I’ll admit that I did not check out local bookstores. Amazon does however, carry the book and so you can find it there for sure if you are interested.
Bottom line: Highly recommended.
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
First therapy session – Ms. J
We had our first session with Ms. J this weekend. To remind you, this is the speech-pathologist who is our local expert in apraxia who I almost missed the opportunity to work with. The session went very well. It is amazing how cooperative (comparatively) Ava can be in order to get to play with new toys. Well, except these:
I believe these are a relatively popular toy. Ava did not like them at all. Let me interpret her urgent gestures and grunting for you…. “Please put those away….no really. Now. Please. Now. I mean it. Get those away from me. Far away. Out of sight. Right this minute!” So, after the failure to use sing-a-ma-jigs as a fun new toy we moved on to better new toys to play with.
It was an introductory meeting. Everyone was getting to know each other. It wasn’t an instant miracle therapy session where I heard things I had never heard before. I wasn’t expecting that. What did impress me was how quickly Ms. J was able to figure out exactly:
Then she was able to give me some great ideas on how to start working on those things.
I came home with a lot of information and was able to sit down and reflect on what I learned. I sat down and listed about nine things off the top of my head to focus on over the next two weeks that I wouldn’t have been working on if I hadn’t met with her. I’m very happy. I think she was the missing piece in our equation. I have the skills to work with Ava myself, but not the expertise and experience to know what is most important to work on first. With the guidance of an expert, I expect to be 10 times more effective and that is very exciting.
On a completely different note, one thing she didn’t do is confirm a diagnosis. I want one, of course. Which sounds bad, when I think about it. Why on earth would I actually -want- my baby to have a diagnosis? It just makes things concrete. It gives me something specific to fight. Anyway, she didn’t give a firm diagnosis for the same reasons no one else will. It’s too early to tell for sure. She noted some specific characteristics of Ava’s speech that are consistent with apraxia (speech and language history, limited vowel repertoire, etc), and some that are not consistent (Ava actually has decent prosody). We’re going to approach therapy from a motor planning perspective, so what we call the problem is not important.
To confirm the “it’s a small world” phenomenon, Ms. J actually knows the First Steps therapist we’ve been assigned to and thinks well of her. Our First Steps therapist, Ms. A, is actually a former student of Ms. J and they work together as colleagues now. Nice to know Ava will soon be surrounded with excellent therapists.
I believe these are a relatively popular toy. Ava did not like them at all. Let me interpret her urgent gestures and grunting for you…. “Please put those away….no really. Now. Please. Now. I mean it. Get those away from me. Far away. Out of sight. Right this minute!” So, after the failure to use sing-a-ma-jigs as a fun new toy we moved on to better new toys to play with.
It was an introductory meeting. Everyone was getting to know each other. It wasn’t an instant miracle therapy session where I heard things I had never heard before. I wasn’t expecting that. What did impress me was how quickly Ms. J was able to figure out exactly:
- what Ava is currently capable of
- what Ava is not capable of
- what we should start to work on first.
Then she was able to give me some great ideas on how to start working on those things.
I came home with a lot of information and was able to sit down and reflect on what I learned. I sat down and listed about nine things off the top of my head to focus on over the next two weeks that I wouldn’t have been working on if I hadn’t met with her. I’m very happy. I think she was the missing piece in our equation. I have the skills to work with Ava myself, but not the expertise and experience to know what is most important to work on first. With the guidance of an expert, I expect to be 10 times more effective and that is very exciting.
On a completely different note, one thing she didn’t do is confirm a diagnosis. I want one, of course. Which sounds bad, when I think about it. Why on earth would I actually -want- my baby to have a diagnosis? It just makes things concrete. It gives me something specific to fight. Anyway, she didn’t give a firm diagnosis for the same reasons no one else will. It’s too early to tell for sure. She noted some specific characteristics of Ava’s speech that are consistent with apraxia (speech and language history, limited vowel repertoire, etc), and some that are not consistent (Ava actually has decent prosody). We’re going to approach therapy from a motor planning perspective, so what we call the problem is not important.
To confirm the “it’s a small world” phenomenon, Ms. J actually knows the First Steps therapist we’ve been assigned to and thinks well of her. Our First Steps therapist, Ms. A, is actually a former student of Ms. J and they work together as colleagues now. Nice to know Ava will soon be surrounded with excellent therapists.
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