Dikah

We recently had our 3 month follow up with Cordons case worker for early intervention therapy.  I was blown away that it has only been three months since we started therapy with him.  It feels like a lot longer. Maybe that's because of how much change has come from this.

Cordon is doing fantastic with the therapist.  We have two that come once a week.  A speech therapist and a general therapist.

The speech therapist, Patty, is great.  She is so good with Cordon and I am constantly blown away at how quick she is to adjust to him.  She makes him work hard so frequently he gets frustrated with her and he will try to do his own thing.  With in 10 seconds she will take what ever he is doing and turn it into a lesson.  Everything she does is encouraging him to communicate either with pictures, signs or words.  We started out doing pictures and we were all shocked at how fast he picked up the concept.  We have pictures for several things around the house.  When he wants that object or to do that action he brings us the picture.  This usually takes kids his age several months to fully understand the concept.  He mastered it in 3 weeks.  Once he had the pictures down we moved onto signs.  The idea is to take away a picture when he learns the sign.  This was harder for Cordon to pick up.  Mostly because he won't imitate people so we have to do a lot of hand on hand with him.  Basically we move his arms and hands for him until he learns to do the sign on his own.  It took some time but he has finally understood that signing is a lot easier then bringing us pictures so he is picking up on it very quickly.  He is up to about 50 signs. 

Here is a little clip of Patty playing with Cordon.


The next step is to get him to talk.  We are to the point where he will give a 'verbal' response to every question.  However 99% of the time that response is the same made up word.  And this word changes about every week.  So far it has been ish, quish, and dih.  But my favorite was the week he used dikah.  You could point to any object, ask what it is and he would say "dikah".  Every time he said dikah this SNL clip came to mind.(Just the first 30 seconds) Fortunately, every so often he will attempt to say an actual word.  This is very rare and only when he feels like it, but it is an improvement.  So far we have heard car seat, house, horse, carrots, strawberry, and goldfish.  Such random words. 

Diane is the general therapist.  She brings different games that encourage Cordon to do things that are out of his comfort zone.  Such as a doll to try and get him to feed it and take care of it.  This helps encourage him to imitate things he sees us do.  Or she will bring different sensory objects.  Cordon has a little bit of sensory issues, mostly with his hands so she brings things like playdoh or a bucket of beans for him to play with.  It's always very fun to watch his expression every time she brings things like this.  One time she buried his toys in the beans to force him to touch them.  He flicked the beans away one at a time until he got to his toy.  Fortunately, he now loves beans and he has his own bucket.  It's like an indoor sandbox. 

He may not talk much but he is really creative about communicating and has no problem getting his point across.  One day he brought me Mr. Potato heads shoes then went and stood by the closet where his shoes are.  Another time he was really annoyed at the therapist so he signed to her that she was all done, brought her her shoes then went and stood by the door.  We both had a good laugh over that one.

Doing therapy has also drastically changed the way I parent and the way I see Cordon.  I use to spend most of my days 'distracting' him.  I'd give him something to play with, then go work on something until he got bored then I would do it again. I would get on the floor and play with him but it was usually no more then 10 min at a time and only a couple times a day.  Looking back I realize that that is pretty pitiful being a stay at him mom with only one child.  Each week the therapist leave Chris and I with 'homework'. Something to work on with Cordon for the week.  This has helped me to really spend a lot of time on the floor with him, giving him my undivided attention.  I have also learned a lot about childhood development.  Having a better understanding of what is going on in that little head of his and understanding why he does certain things has given me such a better appreciation for him, and a lot more patients.