Summer's Journey

And the story of Henry continues... Now he has achieved the goal of 'intentional exhalation'; he can blow a horn. He was also starting to blow bubbles.  While I was celebrating this achievement, to his parents, Henry is still non-verbal. He is still NOT TALKING. He has more 'random' sounds than a year ago but they are unintentional. And of course, nowhere near speech for communication. So what's next? As much as I believe that Henry will talk one day (based on my past experience of two boys who started having functional speech at 10 years old), self-doubt started creeping in. Henry was already 7 years old. He spent a year learning to blow. How long more will he take to learn the other components needed for speech? Not long after, Mum popped the question... "Will Henry ever talk? What do you think we should do, now that his 'window of opportunity' is closing?" With some self-doubt but abundance blind faith, I told her that "Yes he

It's unbelievable how fast the first six months of the year just flew past in a flash. I have been wanting to share this amazing story about Henry... Henry has been undergoing therapy with me since May 2015. He was six years old at that time. He has Autism and did not use speech to communicate, i.e. non-verbal. His parents had only one goal: SPEECH. Henry was one of the most silent child I have ever met in my then 7+ year career. He was referred to me by his Occupational Therapist (OT) who had been (and still is) working on his body awareness and motor planning.  After Initial Assessment, Henry was found to have very limited pre-verbal skills, i.e. visual tracking, auditory tracking, turn-taking, choice making, cause-and-effect, joint attention, and imitation skills. His play skill was at the very basic level of exploratory play. How can a child be verbal when he has limited PRE-verbal skills?? Not an easy 'case'! He was as silent as a mouse; I cannot even try