Michael's Speech Therapy

A couple of weeks ago I asked you all for some input about "age appropriate" errors and whether, in your experience, they resolve on their own for a child with a history of speech problems that needed intervention. After reading all the comments and emails I received from you I decided to relax a little with Michael. His only remaining errors are with /th/ (and some slight gliding of /r/ and /l/ which doesn't concern me at this point).

Before I asked you all for your input I was planning a major push on /th/. I was going to work with Michael on /th/ for 45 minutes x2 a week in the waiting area while Ava was getting her Tu/Th speech therapy. I've decided he doesn't need that much. In fact, pushing too hard might be counter-productive.

Instead, I need to work from his strengths. Michael is an early reader. Letters have always spoken to him. He learned his alphabet really early. He learned letter-sound correspondences early. He was just interested. Reading Chicka Chicka Boom Boom taught him the alphabet. Playing with the AlphaBlocks website taught him the correspondences. Bob books and the Usborne Early Readers taught him to decode CVC words. He likes it. So, I'm going to sneak in raising his awareness of the difference between /f/ and /th/ through reading. (I'm also going to do a little traditional artic work on it, but I'll get to that in a minute.) The reading work I've done with Michael so far hasn't dealt with any of the digraphs (th, ch, sh, etc.) so he hasn't had the opportunity to realize that "thumb", for example, is actually not spelled "fum." I'm going to do activities that focus on reading words with "th" and "f" and see if that does the trick.

I also came across the concept of 5-minute speech therapy at some point. I don't remember exactly where, why, or when, but it's been floating around in the back of my head ever since. I find the concept intriguing. It would allow an amazing amount of personalization in a school setting. Essentially, instead of grouping students into twice a week 30-60 minute sessions, you see all of the speech children on your caseload for 5-7 minute individual sessions heavily focused on drill in the hallway. Just pull them from their room for a few minutes several times a week and do heavy drill on their specific target phonemes at exactly the level they need to be working at. I find this idea tempting for straight artic kids. Done right, they could get as much practice in 5-7 individual minutes as they do in a 30-45 minute group session. They lose much less classroom time. Your schedule is more flexible and make-ups would be much easier to squeeze in. But I digress...

I thought I'd use that concept with Michael. Instead of working /th/ for 45 minutes twice a week I'll do an intense 5-7 minute drill twice a week. Then we'll move on to some other activity. Once a week, we do his weekly preschool homework. The other day we'll do some reading taking the time to highlight every example of "th" that occurs in that reading.

And that's my current speech plan for Michael. In large part, that's due to the input I got from those of you saying that it would probably be fine to relax a little about the /th/. So, thanks!

The Weekly Review: Week 76

SLP Resource of the Week

Rebecca at Adventures in Speech Pathology has put together a great beginning of the school year post on 10 Things You Need for Articulation Therapy. The post lists the 10 things along with links to free resources she found browsing the web to give you materials in the 10 areas. I particularly liked the beautiful, accurate informational handout on the hierarchy of speech therapy Rebecca linked to in #3 from Mommy Speech Therapy.

Ava this Week

As we were walking to school one day this week, we came across some art that had obviously been traced into the setting concrete by some adolescent males. Ava stopped, entranced by the foot long line drawing of male genitalia before her. Then she excitedly shouted, "Look Mama! Someone drew scissors on the sidewalk!" I sure was grateful she interpreted that picture as scissors especially given that she decided to shout her observations to everyone walking by on the street.

Weekly Michael

Michael is a conservative soul who tends to learn well from his mistakes - sometimes too well. He was trying to keep up with his running sister one day on the way to school and fell, scraping the palms of his hands. I helped him up and comforted him. The next day, as he could tell Ava was gearing up for another spontaneous run, he cautioned the family, "Now, we can't run anymore on sidewalks because we can fall and scrape our hands." I haven't been able to persuade him to run again. He'll discontentedly watch Ava and I run ahead, but refuses to break out of his conservative, safe pace even as the distance between us lengthens. I don't know how to encourage/reassure him. I worry about that boy sometimes.

Weekly Weight Loss

This week I'm down 1.6. Taking last week's bump up into consideration, that's an average weight loss of a little less than half a pound over the past two weeks. Given that we had out of town guests for an extended weekend and a couple of extravagant meals here and there I'll consider this a win. It's nice to be back on track though.

I've also started walking the kids to school in the morning weather permitting. I spend 30-35 minutes (round-trip) walking and so that adds some consistent activity to my routine. We usually have a great time. We examine rocks and flowering vines. We talk about the dewdrops shining in the sunlight. We say hello to the construction workers setting up for their day's work patching the road. We discuss sparing the lives of the bugs on the sidewalk rather than squishing them. We discuss and practice staying aware of the traffic around us and safe street crossing procedures. All in all, it's much better family time than driving.

This Week's Special Event

I'm beginning to have senior moments. (And I'm not all that "senior" as my 40th birthday is still well on the horizon.) I typed out this section heading with something in particular in mind and then promptly forgot what I was intending to write about. Let me just say - that is darned irritating. Oh well, sorry about that. :-)

Have a great weekend everyone!

Thank You Volunteers (A Sneak Preview Thank You)

I wanted to sincerely thank everyone who commented or emailed me offering to help proofread my new book. I got far more offers than I needed. I've already contacted the people who sent in the first few offers and I don't need any more volunteers for now.

Here's a sneak preview of just a few of the 53 reproducible /s/ resources you'll find in the book.

Once I get some feedback, I'll make any corrections necessary and make the book available. I'll be sure to keep everyone updated.