AND SO HE STARTED TALKING... (Part 2)
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 will! But... it might take a while... maybe another 2-3 years..."
So I gave Mum three options:
(1) To get a caregiver to do daily practices in between the weekly sessions
(2) To increase the frequency of sessions to three times a week (as recommended by research)
(3) To stop therapy for now and resume two years later when Henry is more mature.
Lo and behold! Mum has blind faith in me. She chose option No. 2, to increase session frequency to two times a week (not three due to financial constraints).
So the twice weekly sessions ran for another year and Henry started vocalising intentionally! Yippee!
Now I can finally start shaping the vocalisations into speech sounds. So we worked on a few early developing vowels and consonants.
Finally finally, after another year of therapy focusing on these early developing vowels and consonants, Henry was ready to combine these speech sounds into words! For example, "I want" = "ah-ee oo-ah" and "more" = "m-orh"
It was after a long three years of regular weekly/twice weekly therapy that Henry said his first words, "I want", "more", "open", "bubble", and the most important word "mama". A champagne-worthy moment!
That was in March this year. Now we are working on more words for critical communication - rejection (to say "no"), affirmation (to say "yes"), request for help (to say "help"), request for items (to say the names of desired items like "bubbles" and "iPad"), and request for break (to say "rest"). We are also working on social words "hello" and "bye bye".
The words are not 100% clear yet but they are good enough for functional communication.
Finally we have arrived, but this is not the end. This is only the beginning!
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 will! But... it might take a while... maybe another 2-3 years..."
So I gave Mum three options:
(1) To get a caregiver to do daily practices in between the weekly sessions
(2) To increase the frequency of sessions to three times a week (as recommended by research)
(3) To stop therapy for now and resume two years later when Henry is more mature.
Lo and behold! Mum has blind faith in me. She chose option No. 2, to increase session frequency to two times a week (not three due to financial constraints).
So the twice weekly sessions ran for another year and Henry started vocalising intentionally! Yippee!
Now I can finally start shaping the vocalisations into speech sounds. So we worked on a few early developing vowels and consonants.
Finally finally, after another year of therapy focusing on these early developing vowels and consonants, Henry was ready to combine these speech sounds into words! For example, "I want" = "ah-ee oo-ah" and "more" = "m-orh"
It was after a long three years of regular weekly/twice weekly therapy that Henry said his first words, "I want", "more", "open", "bubble", and the most important word "mama". A champagne-worthy moment!
That was in March this year. Now we are working on more words for critical communication - rejection (to say "no"), affirmation (to say "yes"), request for help (to say "help"), request for items (to say the names of desired items like "bubbles" and "iPad"), and request for break (to say "rest"). We are also working on social words "hello" and "bye bye".
The words are not 100% clear yet but they are good enough for functional communication.
Finally we have arrived, but this is not the end. This is only the beginning!
Comments
Post a Comment