We are halfway through the 6 weeks course of ‘It takes Two to Talk’. After the 6th class, Nathan will officially begin his speech therapy session with Cathy and of course Nelson and I will continue this speech session at home with Nathan and apply techniques we are learning from class.
Today we talked more about language facilitation such as:
Expand child’s utterances = If Nathan says bus on the freeway, the parents should expand ‘bus’ a little more like ‘yellow bus’. Then move on to saying ‘yellow bus is moving’.
Be animated = Showing some animation by smiling, touching or swinging of the arms makes the conversation more interesting to a child. If you jump up and down like a ball, then the child will do the same. Or if you start running around, then the child will run around. This is communication. The child sees what you do and the child responds back by doing the same.
Increase number of turns in conversation = Parents always end up doing most of the talking when they are teaching their child how to communicate. This is what we have to watch out for. When we talk to our child, we think that our son is learning. But we really don’t know if he is actually learning because we don’t give him time or a chance to respond or communicate back to us. So this is when we have to remember to use the OWL (observe, wait and listen).
Signal verbally and non-verbally = Signal verbally would be like the photobook example I mentioned earlier in another blog date. I point to the picture and tell him what I am pointing at such as a car or a ball. Non-verbally is just the opposite. I have to have Nathan fill in the blanks instead of me telling him of what I am pointing at. Today, Nathan ate some apples. Instead of pointing to the apples and saying apples to him, I just pointed to his apples inside his bowl and I just waited for him to say ‘apples’ himself.
We did more role playing where this time Nelson played the role of Nathan. Cathy took out some toys and asked Nelson to pretend he is Nathan. So Nelson started playing with the cars and said vroom vroom. Then Cathy imitated what Nelson did. After doing some role play, Cathy discussed what we can do to facilitate communication with Nathan when he does certain things with his toys.
Another parent did role play with Cathy. This parent brought her son to the day care for the first time. When I met her son Wil who is almost 3 years old, I noticed that he didn’t want to play with Nathan. Nathan was following Wil a lot at the day care but Wil kept walking away. Wil was quiet and didn’t want to interact or socialize with Nathan. At first I thought Wil was too shy or just wanted to play by himself. But when the mother did the role play with Cathy, I was getting the impression that her son Wil has autism. When the mother pretended to be her son Wil and Cathy was playing with her, the mother showed how he would act at home when his family members are trying to play with him. He would always not want to talk or interact with anyone even with his family. He kept to himself a lot. When the family wants to interact with him by playing with him, he would walk away and do things by himself or get angry when someone tries to communicate with him. His mother said that Wil just always want to be in his own world and keeps to himself a lot.
When class was over, we went back to the day care and I saw Wil and Nathan playing with toys. I think that having a child close to Nathan’s age and Wil’s age opens up more communication. Wil has an older sister who also attended the class. But since Wil has no siblings close to his age, facilitating communication with him may be a little tougher because most people at his home are all adults. For Nathan, he is open and friendly to anyone. Since Nathan is more open and expressive, Wil kinda opened up to him easily than adults. Nathan doesn’t have to say anything to Wil. But I am sure that kids will copy other kids. If Nathan played with toys a certain way, Wil will play his toys that way too. Back at the day care, I showed Nathan a train. When you press the button on the train, the train makes a choo choo sound. When Nathan kept pressing the choo choo train button, Wil walked up to Nathan and did the same. So this is why I feel that it is really important to have other children with same age play with Nathan and Wil to help them with communication and interaction.
Since Nathan is in this speech program, he can attend this children/parent activity at the day care on Thurs. But we have to wait until our class is over on Nov 16 because of work. So once we finish the class, I would like to take him to that children/parent activity one of these days especially since Nathan is still on the waiting list for the Pixar Day Care. It would be nice to have him go to a place where he can begin to interact with other kids his age now instead of waiting until he can enroll at the Pixar Day Care.
Oh also, my friend pointed out to me today’s date 2011/1102… a mirror image of the year and month/day. I asked her if this is good luck or bad luck? She said it is just an interesting date like people getting married on 10.10.10 because it is considered good luck. I told her that Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries should have waited to get married until 11.11.11 because few days ago Kim Kardashian filed for divorce after being married to Kris Humphries only for 72 Days! Was this marriage just a publicity stunt to make more money? Is Kim Kardashian really a good business woman? She really made a lot of money for getting married. Until now, her wedding is still showing on TV (Kim’s Fairytale Wedding/a Kardashian event).
I love watching the TV reality show Kardashians. But some people dislike them. I watch the Kardashians TV reality show because these women are powerful and entrepreneurs. They have their TV reality show, their own business, they are models, etc. So more power to the women! 🙂