The Campaign Against the Mama Phase

About a week ago I complained about the over-the-top Mama phase Ava is going through. A very nice commenter, JR Morber, made some well thought out suggestions. She said that they used a combination of strategies to fight a Mama stage with her son. I'm going to summarize her suggestions in list form.

1. Mama should be a little less effective at meeting the child's needs. Slow down. Make them wait.
2. Refuse to respond to small requests unless Daddy can do it.
3. "Pro-daddy praise campaign."
4. Special Daddy-only activities.
5. Re-arrange routines so that Daddy is taking the major role in care whenever possible.
6. Resist stepping in during Daddy-child interactions.

It sounds like a thorough, well thought out plan. And it sounded like a lot of work. At the time I thought that things weren't bad enough to put that much work into trying to fix the problem. I was just hoping that eventually the phase would pass.

Well, things continued to get worse over the next several days. Then one morning Ava pitched a fit just because her Daddy said "hi" to her during a moment that she thinks of as a Mama time (getting her from her room when she wakes up in the morning.) That was it. We immediately adopted JR Morber's plan.

We're about two and a half days into the plan. Essentially, if my husband is home, he takes point with Ava. When she protests we make some excuse about Mama being busy and then I just leave the room so I'm not an audience for any complaints. Daddy has been making extra efforts to (although he's always good) be funny, nice, and entertaining. Daddy has dressed her, put her down for nap and bed, put her into the carseat and taken her back out, played with her during play times, helped her at the dinner table, etc. It's working beautifully. We're already seeing a big change and it is wonderful.

Thank you, thank you, thank you to JR Morber if you're reading this.

We'll keep this up for several more days and then hope that the good will towards Daddy lasts when we go back to taking turns with the children.

Apraxia Therapy: Communication Boards

Young children with Childhood Apraxia of Speech are often very frustrated, have very few words, and are resorting to gestures to try to get what they want. Often those gestures are not effective and their frustration just continues to increase. They can begin to give up trying to communicate. You want to give them some success at communicating and reduce their frustration. Communication boards are a great way to achieve these goals.

What are Communication Boards?

A communication board for a young child is simply a set of pictures placed in an area accessible to the child. The purpose of the communication board is to allow the child to communicate successfully without needing speech. Communication boards are considered to be a low technology form of augmentative and alternative communication.

Why would I give my child a Communication Board? Don't I want him/her to talk?

Yes, you absolutely want your child to learn to talk. Teaching your child with apraxia to talk is your long term goal. Communication boards can solve several problems in the meantime and get you closer to that goal.

• Communication boards reduce frustration. When your child can successfully communicate with you they will be less frustrated and happier.
• Communication boards teach your child about language and communication. If your child has no words, or very few words, they have not had the opportunity to learn how powerful and easy communication can be. Once they get a taste of successfully and easily communicating, they will want to learn more.
• Communication boards increase vocabulary. Every picture you include on your communication boards is a word you are hoping they will eventually learn.
• Communication boards encourage speech. Over time, your child may naturally try to vocalize the word as they point to a picture. Research has shown that this often happens. Therefore your communication boards can be a gateway to speech.

How are Communication Boards used?

Place the communication board on the wall in an appropriate area of your home at a height that is easy for your child to see and point to. You want them to actually be able to run over to the wall and touch the picture of the item or activity they want on the board.

For example, let's take snack time. You can't ask your child, "What would you like to have for snack today?" They don't have the words to answer you. So you put a snack time communication board up on the wall in the kitchen. The communication board has pictures of all of your child's favorite drinks and snacks. At snack time, you can now ask them, "What would you like to have for snack today? Go show me." Your child simply walks over to the board, enjoys looking at all the options, and points to what he or she wants.

How do I design and make a Communication Board?

First you need to identify topics your child would want to communicate about. Be creative in thinking about possible topics for communication boards. Possibilities include:

• Food and drink items posted in the kitchen.
• Television shows they can choose from posted in the living room near the television.
• Table activities they can choose from (coloring, painting, puzzles, games, etc.) posted near the kitchen table or a play table if they have one.
• Favorite toys posted in their play area.
• Items of clothing, hair accessories, etc. posted in their bedroom.

Now you're ready to plan your communication boards. Write out a list of the specific items you want to include on each board. I would put no more than six to eight pictures per board for a young child. So, for example, on a snack time board you might include milk, juice, animal crackers, grapes, banana, and cheerios. Pick items you actually use in your household. No two communication boards are ever the same because they are customized for your household and your child.

Once you have your list, you can make your board using one of several methods.

1. You can take pictures of your household items, have the pictures developed, and cut them out and glue them to a backing (construction paper, posterboard, cardstock, even regular printer paper).
2. You can cut pictures out of magazines and then glue them onto a backing.
3. You can use a computer program like Microsoft Word and import pictures you've taken digitally or pictures you've found online to make your board and then print it.

Can you give me some examples of Communication Boards?

Here are a couple of communication boards we used in our house. I made both of them on the computer. The kitchen communication board I made with pictures I took of actual items in the house with my camera phone. The television communication board I made with images I found in Google image search.

You might also be interested in the following articles:

Apraxia Therapy: Gestural Prompts

Apraxia Therapy: Two-Word Combinations

The Weekly Review: Week Six

Blog Post I Liked Most:

Linda at All & Sundry took a picture every day for a month. I liked her pictures and I admire the commitment. No matter how hard I try, and even though my phone is always with me (therefore a camera is always handy), I never take as many pictures as I'd like.

Quote of the Week from Michael:

At dinner, my husband asked Michael where he got the toy bird he was playing with. Michael though for a minute obviously searching for a word he could not remember. Then he asked, "What's that place with the big M?" He was trying to remember McDonald's. We went there with some friends, had happy meals, and played in their playplace for almost an hour. It was the first time we'd gone to McDonald's in a long time and so he couldn't remember the name.

Ava's Mini-Fit of the Week:

I was getting Ava from her bedroom in the morning and my husband popped in to say good morning to her on his way to Michael's room. Ava started crying, "No Dada!" and shaking her head so vigorously that she lost her balance and slammed her head against her headboard. Sigh. When will this mommy stage pass? It seems to be rooted in the routines because although she didn't want to go downstairs with Daddy, she was perfectly happy to accept the homemade mini muffins he had made her for breakfast.

Project of the Week:

I'm continuing to work on revising the apraxia reference posts and collecting them in one place once they've been revised. It's taking up most of my spare time and so no new projects have been undertaken. This is where you can find the ones I've finished so far.

Book of the Week:

I don't get to read for pleasure very often these days. Life is simply too busy. However, I did read the newest book in one of my favorite series. Patricia Briggs has never disappointed me and this book is no exception even though it is the sixth in a series. I very much enjoyed River Marked which I read on the Kindle app on my iPhone. I love reading books in electronic form, by the way. I always have a book with me. I can carry many books at a time. Reading in dim light is never a problem. The ebook version is almost always less expensive than the paper version. I've been reading ebooks for well over a decade now. I started on a Palm and have continued ever since.