It has been a long time

It has been a long time since my last post but I wanted to say that this year Raphael has undergone intensive speech pathology and his talking skills have take a couple of huge steps forward.

It is obviously still hard work for him to understand what people are saying to him but he is an eager learner and all the hard work that everyone is investing in him is being reflected well in his progress.

New sound "Sh"

I am not sure if I have mentioned it before but we take Raphael to a private speach pathologist and she is fantastic!

Just this last visit she taught him to produce a new sound in just a couple of minutes "Sh".

We have seen a large number of speech pathologists and it seems that very few have the skills required to teach Raphael how to make new sounds. If you don't think that you are making progress with your speech pathologist then I strongly recommend that you ask around for recommendations for good speech pathologists. One thing to watch out for though is that good speech pathologists can get away with charging like a wounded bull.

Paul

Practicing ...k and ...dy

Progress update

After a long time on no apparent speech progress we change strategy about a month ago and we have had some success.

We have stopped giving him what he asks for when he signs for something and have demanded that he also have a good try at saying the word/sentence also. This seems to have paid off because in the last couple of weeks he has started using multi-word sentences and in the last couple of days his pronunciation has improved a lot. He is even occasionally letting a "t" slip out.

And here are some updated photos...

It has been a long time since the last post

Q: So what has been happening lately?
A: The regular drudge of appointments of course.

In addition to the occasional doctor appointment, this is what a typical week looks like at the moment:

Monday: Signing with a deaf adult followed by the early intervention playgroup

Tuesday: Speech Pathology

Wednesday: RIDBC (Royal Institute of Deaf and Blind Children) videoconference

Thursday: Teacher of the Deaf - teaching listening skills.

Friday: Childcare in a mainstream childcare centre. We are hoping to give him some real world exposure rather than the world of therapy and "special needs" that he is immersed in for the rest of the time.

An example home speech pathology session

Not happy about language development

Raphael has been very slow with his language development lately and his new speech pathologist was very unhappy about him only having only about six signs and fewer spoken words.

We are working on doubling his vocabulary by selecting a number of new nouns that are important to him and encouraging/forcing him to sign them before acting on what he wants.

He has made up a new sign where he taps the back of his hand with his index finger. He is starting to use it quite a lot while looking expectantly to us, but Annie and I have yet to work out what it is supposed to mean. I am not sure if he knows what it means either so I think that we'll just force a translate of "shoe" and give him his shoes along with the correct sign whenever he signs his version.

Early learning

My wife took Raphael to Early Learning this morning I believe that the general advice was that the Physiotherapist was happy with Raphael's development but the OT (occupational therapist) thought that he was lagging quite a bit.

The problem with his fine motor skills might be becuase other children his age are picking up small pieces of food with their fingers to eat but of course he doesn't get this experience; he can't even eat mashed potato, let alone a whole sultana. So we are going through our toys looking for things with small things to grab hold of. Of course we can't just give him tiny things because of the risk that he might put them in his mouth and choke on them. The only thing that I can think of at the moment is baby puzzles that have the little knobs on the pieces to pick them up by.

My wife believes that Raphael has made attempts at verbalising a few words:
All done: "Ada"
Zài jiàn (Chinese for goodbye): "Dyadya"
Gěi: (Chinese for give): Ge

She claims that the evidence is that:

• the sound is approximately correct
• he has said these things more than once; and
• he says them in conjunction with sign language (or action in the case of give)
  

I think that Annie is still being a bit optimistic about this being speech. I suspect that this might turn out to be another "head scratching incident" as he has not signed mummy in a very long time. But regardless of this we will use his sounds back to him (and with the correct pronunciation) to reinforce this behavior and with any luck he will learn that he has actually said an understandable word and not just a coincidental grunt.

ELT consulation

Raphael went to an Early Learning Tasmania session today with Annie. Annie said that he was a bit bemused with the six or so women with varied specialities giving him their full attention.

• General teacher
• Vision and mobility specialist
• Speech pathologist
• Physiotherapist
• Occupational therapist
• Session recorder
• and of course mummy
  

Compiled the blog history up to now

phew that took a while!

I know that I missed detailing several paediatrician appointments, at least one ENT appointment and I have barely mentioned the speech pathologist and dietician appointments but there were many in this time as well. I haven't even touched on the number of times that we have been to the hospital to reinsert his NGT after he has extracted it (3 times last week alone).

On average up till now we have had about two appointments per week. Sometimes four sometimes only one. I can't remember the last time that we had a week without an appointment of some kind for Raphael.

Solids for the first time

Introduced solids for the first time at the hospital with a speech pathologist present. Rice cereal… yum. All of our kids have pulled the same expression the first time we fed them rice cereal; just as though we had put the most bitter thing ever into their mouths.

May to December 2006 - Feeding

From May to December we had been trying all sorts of different things to help Raphael gain weight based on advice from the staff at the RHH. Breastfeeding, expressing, different types of teats, different types of fortification, formula, different strength formula, different feeding schedules, and finally Infatrini (the highest powered formula that can be safely given to a baby). Also during this time we had many appointments with speech pathologists and dieticians.