Easter 2011

We had a wonderful Easter. I hope you had a great day too.

The morning began with the children discovering their Easter baskets. They enjoyed the candy and small toys included in their baskets. I had found some small pinwheels and included one in each basket. I didn't really think about it at the time, but they are a great oral motor activity. Ava had a lot of trouble getting her pinwheel to spin, but didn't give up. Of course there's always that one item that is more popular than all the rest. The kids loved the M&M filled gumball machines. They were the first things the children spotted and it was hard to get them to put the gumball machines down long enough to even look at the Easter baskets.

Mid-morning my parents arrived and the entire family participated in dyeing and decorating Easter eggs. Everyone had fun. We began by dyeing them and just as Michael was getting bored with the activity the first set were dry. He loved decorating them. We used the stickers in the egg dying kit and when those ran out I pulled out some art materials and glue and we used those too.

A couple eggs were cracked and therefore the children got to try hard-boiled eggs for the first time. I don't like hard-boiled eggs and never make them. So my kids had never tried them. My parents like them though and were able to set a good example. Michael refused to try a bite at first, but he'll do anything for his grandpa and eventually tried some. He eventually took a few bites of the white, but never tried the yolk. Ava finally decided she'd try a bite after feeling left out of all the attention Michael was getting. She spit the bite back out without even chewing it. I think she was startled that it was cold and didn't like the texture at all. I was pretty impressed she took a bite at all and praised her for trying it.

After lunch (breakfast for lunch - yummy) we were invited to a neighbor's house for an Easter egg hunt. The rain forced the hunt inside. This was the first year the children were old enough to really participate in an Easter egg hunt. Michael loved it. His bag was full at the end of the hunt and he thoroughly enjoyed discovering what was inside the eggs. Ava seemed a bit confused by it all, and entertained the adults by refusing to put any egg in her bag that wasn't pink. If she found a egg of any other color she'd toss it to the floor and practically run away. I slipped a purple one in her bag thinking it was close enough, but when she found it the purple one got tossed too. The other children were wonderful and began bringing all their pink finds to her for her bag.

It was a great family day and we all had a wonderful time.

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