I’m so frustrated today! To make it worse, I’m frustrated with myself for being frustrated. I went to put Ashlynn on abcmouse.com, and early learning site for kids as young as two. Since she’s 3.7, I figured this should be great. Wrong. Turns out using a mouse requires a high degree of motor planning and coordination. God. It sucks. She can’t even do things two year olds can do. I
I never thought when I was going through school to be a speech/language pathologist, or when I became a speech/language pathologist, that I would one day have a child who would have apraxia. It’s funny, because before I had Ashlynn, I was still drawn to the disorder. I was highly disappointed about the information that was available on it in graduate school. I think I have a packet of maybe
Ashlynn’s progress continues to grow by leaps and bounds. So many times I catch myself smiling and my eyes well up with tears to see her knock down all of her obstacles. Last month she learned to jump for the first time at 3 1/2. At the beginning of the year, it broke my heart to watch her try on a classroom trampoline. On their turn, all the other kids
Ashlynn is literally making leaps and bounds in her speech. Sometimes, I feel like we are actually having a mini conversation. I think the greatest aspect is her being able to tell me where she’s hurting, or even tell me what she wants to eat. She tries to repeat everything now, and even has some sponteaneous four word utterances! The past week, her new thing was “too” as in, “Ashlynn
So, I went back to work this past month. As I was going through my new caseload and reviewing files, I came across a boy I’ll call Ben. Ben was a nonverbal Kindergarten student in the Spanish classroom with above average intelligence. Ben had suspected Childhood Apraxia of Speech. The SLP who was substituting for me, wrote me an email saying, “he has no motivation or desire to communicate right
December book of the month is The Gingerbread Man. This classic book has so many repetitive opportunites jam packed in the pages, and the kids absolutely love it! Tonight, Ashlynn’s word was “man” which combines a bilabial sound ‘m’ with a final consonant ‘n.’ On almost every other page the Gingerbread man shouts, “Run, run, fast as you can. You can’t catch me I’m the Gingerbread man!” Then, various characters