Summer's Journey

I thought I was going to be late for this year's Thanksgiving post! But I made it before the year ends. I was away for the last two weeks to attend my best friend's wedding and just returned two days ago. It was in Las Vegas, and then I took the opportunity to visit New York during Christmas. Just wanted to see Christmas movies come alive. Hah!  An amazing experience in New York the week before Christmas - to see the bustling streets and beautiful deco.  Plus experiencing a cold wave of -14 degrees! Brrrrrr! And so here are some of the many things I am thankful for in 2022... BUSINESS 2022 has been a long year at Summer's. We started off with much hope of expanding the company - we were looking for a new location for a bigger center, as well as securing new Speech Therapist hires. A post-pandemic recovery had been forecasted and we were looking at expansion. But God seemed to have other plans - or rather, He protected Summer's for the storm that was coming ahead. Singap...

Finally! After 2 years 8 months, I made my first overseas consultation trip last week. It was to Jakarta, Indonesia.  The four kids whom I have been working with are no longer kids! Within the last two years, they have grown from tweens to teens (and one of them entered adulthood)! They are now all taller than me, have facial hairs and deeeeeep manly voices.  It was a joy to see them again. And I was super delighted to see them with fresh eyes. My fresh eyes are eyes of Orofacial Myofunctional Therapy (OMT).  Summer's specialises in Orofacial Myofunctional Therapy! Two of us have each undergone 30 hours of specialised training in OMT. Being a specialist in OMT, all of the sudden, I noticed many more recessed jaws, over used chin muscles, flanged lips, posterior tongue ties, low tongue placements, dried cracked lips, dark eye circles and many more. The 'perfect' tongue lateralisations and elevations were no longer perfect. The 'perfect' blowing were no longer perfect...

This is interesting... Last Saturday morning, I had a home-based session. The kiddo, TK, has Autism and has been having speech therapy with me since 2015. He turned 11 this year. His behaviour in sessions has never been the best. At times, he would be lying on the bed or trying to walk on the railings of his bunk bed. But today was one of his better days.  After working on his processing skills for 20 minutes (and this can be quite tiring for him), TK transited to narrative writing task without fuss! He did not even need a break. I was elated! "Yes! Today I can push him more!" I thought to myself. However, at this very moment, his mother entered the room. She came in with two plates - on one of the plates, there was a wrapped ice cream and on the other, an unwrapped one. She passed me the wrapped ice cream and told me to enjoy. Then she passed TK the plate with the unwrapped ice cream. She told him, "Here, you said you wanted an ice cream right...? You want to try this n...

The March school holidays flew past just like that. Tomorrow is the first day of school for Term 2!  In this blog post, let me share about YY, one of the children who has been attending Be@Summer's since January 2022.  YY is 10 years old and has Autism. She has been attending Speech Therapy sessions with us since 2018. When she first started with us at 6 years old, she was completely non-verbal and now, she is able to speak in short sentences. Her sessions were on a fortnightly basis due to financial constraints. However, thankful to the consistent follow-up from the family, YY started talking about six months into therapy! Sadly... things started to go downhill in mid 2021. YY started to display 'obsessive compulsive' behaviours and compliance in sessions reduced significantly. In every session, a lot of time was spent on behaviour management and little targeted work was done. Her family also started to have a lot of difficulties doing the homework with her. Towards the en...

We are halfway through the first school term of 2022. And we are into the 4th session of our newly-launched Specialist Intervention Programmes! The kids look like they are having a lot of fun! The feedback from parents have been great too. Just over the weekend, one parent proudly shared how her son is now about to sit and attend a public library 20-minute story telling time!                                        Talk@Summer's where children learn langauge and social/group skills through fun activities!  When we first launched this series of programmes, it was called Early Intervention Programme. We quickly realised that many parents thought it was like the commonly-known "Early Intervention Programme", where the goals include all areas of development, i.e. gross motor, fine motor, adaptive, cognitive, social-communication and social domains. However, that is not our intenti...

Tomorrow is the last day of 2021! The second year with COVID-19. I cannot tell you all how grateful I am to have survived yet another year in the midst of COVID.  AWESOME TEAM I am super thankful of my staff members. With many changes in the Government's COVID measures, my team is always on standby, ready to act in accordance to MOH's directives - therapy groups of 2 or groups of 5, ART if the child has a HRW, ART if the child has a family member with IO, etc. Pfft! So many different variations! All my staff members also followed my directive to take weekly ART without hesitation, even when it was not mandated. They conscientiously followed up with sending declarations to parents before every session. For my home-based therapists, they even had to eat their lunches in a corner at void decks when no dining-in was allowed!  PARTNERS Families - So thankful for the families who supported us throughout the past year. They did not kick a fuss when we took extra safety measures to ca...

https://shopee.sg/product/10241540/3978049228?smtt=0.120496922-1629266870.9 I am half impressed and half stunned by the pseudo-"Talktools Horn Hierarchy" on Shopee. Similar horns. Less than half the price. Even the kazoo is included (#11)! At the end of the day, always remember that it is not the tools, but the underlying principles that matters - whether it is working on the jaw, the lips, the tongue, the breath support or the voicing. Always ask your Speech Therapist what, how, and why. WHAT tool is this? HOW should my child use it? WHY does my child need to use this? Oh! Forgot to disclaim that oral motor work will NOT produce speech. Speech work will produce speech. Oral motor work will only prepare the child for speech work. So please make sure that your child is doing speech practices if you want him/her to start talking soon!