One more sound!

My little munchkin isn't so little anymore. He will be going into 3rd grade next year. WOW!

We had our meeting with his speech teacher. He has ONE sound and then she thinks he may be done with speech. He just has to master that pesky "th" sound. He's been working SO hard. That is a far cry from the list we first started with. I swear that first list was any sound imaginable and we worked and worked and he did it.

Every now and then he stutters or gets hung up on what he is trying to say. But that is mostly when he doesn't think about it. He generally stops when he gets "tongue tied" and he thinks about it and will rephrase it. It is just one way he has learned to deal with it. If he is reading from a book, he is 100% correct on the pronounciations. I guess because he is thinking about what he is saying.

I can't begin to tell you how proud I am of him. He has come so far.

Now I guess I should change the title of this blog and turn it into my daughter's speech journey...lol. She has been seeing my son's speech therapist for a year now. She started the same as Christian. And it is so funny to hear Christian correct Kelsey. I always hear NO! Kelsey that isn't how you say it. Say it again. No! Like this! It makes me giggle, yet feel bad for her. So I have to correct Christian on how he is talking to her. I don't want him to hurt her feelings. But i love how he wants to help her!

Wow---where has the time gone?

WOW! I have been offline for a while and realized I hadn't updated anything about Christian for ages.

He is in 1st grade now. He is still in speech. But this year we had his tonsils and adenoids out and we had tubes placed in his ears. When we went to the ear doctor, they said he had a huge hearing loss. But the tubes seem to be helping and he is "catching up" with the rest of his age group. Don't get me wrong he is still behind. But at a reading level he is right on target. By that I mean when he reads his words are pronounced correctly. He just needs help when talking. As long as he stops and thinks about what he is saying, it comes out the right away. But if he gets excited about something, everything comes out slurred. Which the good news is, to his ears it even sounds wrong.

His speech therapist said we should be so proud of the progress he's made this year. And we are. We are ecstatic. It has been such a long journey and it still isn't over. But at an academic level he is right where he needs to be if not above. He loves math and does really well at it. Fortunately, because I stink at it..lol

For other parents out there who has a child that struggles, don't give up. If you can't find help, just keep on looking. I found the best place for me to start was the local headstart. Even though I knew we wouldn't be accepted income wise. They have speech therapists and early childhood teachers that come to their school so many times a week. And these teachers and therapists are affiliated with the school district. The headstart should be able to put you in contact with the IEP department....and don't stress about the costs. If it is through the school district, it is free. As long as your child is in that district, they can get the help they need for free. We started this at the age of 4 and they put him in the appropriate preschool (for free) and he was always with the speech therapist and a teacher who knew how to help delayed children.

Kindergarten!

WOW! Time has gotten away from me. I can't believe June was my last post. Since my last post, Christian has started kindergarten. We went through so many meetings but they were all worth it. We enrolled him in speech at the elementary school and he has shown a HUGE improvement.

He is still behind on speech but he is doing fantastic in the areas of math and reading. He can read! I was so proud of him at the last parent teacher meeting. She was telling me all these great things about him. She uses Christian has a peer instructor. He helps the kids who don't know their words yet. They were given a list of words at the beginning of the school year that they would be learning and he knows ALL of his! She sends home 8 page books and he is reading those.

He is also writing which he has been doing for some time so that isn't anything new.

It is so exciting to know that the little boy so many people thought would be behind on so many things forever is doing above and beyond what people thought he would! Don't ever stop at what they can do but keep them going. Set the bar high so that they can work up to it. I think you'll be surprised at how well they can and will do!

Still going Slow

Since I haven't updated in a while I thought I'd make a quick one.Christian's progress is still going slow. But we are making progress so no matter how slow, progress is progress.

I have index cards to make flashcards. The kindergarten teacher that he is going to have next year gave us a list of words that they will learn and recognize in kindy so I thought I'd go ahead and at least show him the words they will learn the first 9 weeks. He remembers things so I just have to figure out how to get him to learn to sound words out instead of memorizing.

But he will be going to school with 3 kids from his preschool class so that will be nice. I'm hoping he sees at least one of them this summer. These 2 don't mind that he has trouble talking so it is nice to know that he will have at least 2 friends.

We had meetings with the school psychologist, speech therapist and his IEP teacher. We went over his progress and he has made a lot of progress academically. Speech wise he is still behind. He also had kindergarten registration and he is really excited about going to a big school. Lets see if mommy can be as excited as he is :-(

1/25/2006--Meetings for Kindy

Well, we are in the process of setting up meetings for kindergarten. Right now he is 5 and is in a preschool class room. They actually teach most of what kindergarten does but it allows him speech therapy.

I have a meeting on the 2nd of February, just to inform them that he will be attending school. Then we will set up a bunch of meetings to test him. The IEP and the current preschool will send all the reports to the school district which will enable us to enroll him in special education. He mainly needs it for speech.

He is making small improvements in his speech. He can speak longer sentences but still can speak long strings of gibberish. But we are making progress and that is a big plus.

They informed us at one of our meetings that we needed to improve his memory and I'm not sure what type they are talking about. We repeat everything, make him repeat it. We play the game memory which he whips my butt in..LOL Seriously, I don't help him with it at all but he does excellent. I think they are talking about being able to recall things from a story. Like remembering what color a dog was on the previous page and such.

But we we were working more in our preschool workbooks and he does pretty good with most of the things. There are some items that can confuse him and I mark those pages so we can go back. Like which has less of something. He does great at more but less confuses him.

*He can write his whole name (first and last) which makes me laugh because a family member once told me he wouldn't be able to spell his first name. We never setteled for writing Chris but kept going til he could spell Christian. I told his teacher last year to not shorten it when they would practice.
*He can count to 30 (I haven't tried higher)
*of course he knows his ABC's
*He finally likes to sing songs and remembers them now. He used to hate singing.
*Knows his days of the week and even sings the song for them.

I know I missing a lot of the things. To some of you that may be small things but when you have a child who starts their life 2 1/2 months early, these are big things. Of course he can do the normal things most kids his age does. I'm just speaking academically.

Well I'm off. While he is at preschool, I have to get busy!

11/10 Preschool work book

Today we worked in a preschool workbook. We did 15 pages and he did great on the mazes, finding the bigger pictures(same pics--each item is a different size), same with knowing which was smaller. KNows which is longer. For some reason at first couldn't grasp which was shorter on the first picture but after I explained he retained it and got the rest of the pictures correct.

He found the items that were the same in the pictures and found matches. He found the different pictures and I made sure that I asked him WHY they were different and most of the time he could tell a reason why they were different..sometimes he could pick two or three things out. It amazed me that he found the harder reasons as to why it was different rather then the simplest which was always it was a different color(yes he knows his colors...LOL)

He matched pictures and said what went with what. Like they gave 4 pics. A tennis racket and you had to figure out what with in the next 4 pics and he always got that correct.

We just started at the beginning of the book. It does get harder as you go through the book. But the simplest pictures are the best for me to get him talking and saying why something is different. But so far seems easy so I'm trying to think of a few things to make that harder. But I praise him so that maybe it will keep him trying(even if the stuff seems so simple to me and to him)

I'm going to look tomorrow at the store for a few different workbooks. And make out his weekly reading list. And questions we can ask him with those books. Den doesn't do that great of thinking of questions so I'm going to write up a few short questions for him to ask when he reads to him at night. Den loves to read to the kids, just doesn't think of what he can ask so maybe if he sees my simple questions that will help.

Thusday 11/3.

11/3/2005

Thursday Christian doesn't have preschool so since it was gorgeous outside we went on a 2 mile hike. His speech therapist said outings were good for him and to do them a lot because so far in our experience they are causing spontaneous speech--clear sentences.
I made sure to ask him tons of questions and encouraed him to ask his own. Granted, we do this anyways. But we have to make sure to do it in more detail because he needs details.

Then we went to Walmart and bought a few things. I bought a few different workbooks that I want to make sure to get some pages copied of first so we have a few extras if he doesn't understand the page we are working on.

Then we went ahead and bought a few games, Memory and CandyLand. Games we've had in the past that pieces have been lost. So we can only get these games down if I get them down. He needs to concentrate more and improve his memory. So we got one game to help with his memory and another to help him sit down and enjoy the game but still help him with some of his needs.

He has story time tonight with, Den. I think on his 2 days off, we are going to have a more structured environment. Normally those 2 days, we were just doing whatever but I'm going to start having story time, game time(Kel plays too) and workbook time. Story time will probably take a while since it will be full of questions so hopefully I can keep him into it. He likes to do this stuff at home but getting him to do it with me is like pulling teeth.

If anyone else has anything else to ad that may help, feel free to let me know!