Why Is It

That kids learn much better learning in a school enviroment? Damien had no interest in learning signs but now 4 weeks into the school year the kid has come home signing to me after I tried doing ASL here with him at home.

Signs so far:

Hungry
Milk
More
Please

I hope this continues and I can learn more with him. This has been awesome. Much better than the charades we usually have to play to figure out what his needs are.

Ready To Fight....I Guess

Since both boys have had speech issues, I've heard for awhile that I should contact our local hospital to get them in their intensive speech therapy program. This summer Damien will have playgroup once a week for 1 hour, no real speech services though except through play. Most of the people I talk to say that their insurance has paid for the hospital program. I called Blue Cross Blue Shield and asked if we had coverage on our plan for this and she told me it's a gray area. Great. She basically told me that I needed to jump hoops for BCBS before they will agree to cover speech. They definitely do not cover articulation which I can understand that but she thinks with enough paperwork they would approve us for therapy. So I called the hospital to ask what they thought of my situation. I told the woman Damien has Speech Apraxia, tongue thrust, and a constant slobber. She is 100% positive they will have to cover therapy for him. He'd have two 30 minute sessions a week. I am so worried with no REAL services focusing on speech for 3 months he's going to fall further behind. He'll be 3 in just a month and a half and still speaks at a 9-12 month level. Mia saying Bailey now clear as day and Damien saying "dis!" to everything is just heartbreaking day after day after day.

"Pee Boo!"

Damien has really opened up to playing Peek-a-boo with us all. He can actually think to say it now when he puts his hands to eyes. Other times though he just puts his hands to his eyes and laughs.

"My Head"

You can imagine the the look Dave and I gave to each other after Damien responded "my head" to Dave asking "what hurts?" Can't imagine? Well our eyeballs nearly popped out of our head with our mouths opened as wide as they would go with our hands going up quickly to our mouths to cover them. UNBELIEVABLE!!!! We asked (or shall I say begged and pleaded) again however and he couldn't say it. I was so so crushed. I wanted to crawl in a hole and cry. I keep trying to believe Linda that he's making progress but when all you hear is mama, dadda, dis all day....how can you believe it? Is Apraxia really reverseable? I just want this to all end. Will he speak more than a few words by the time he's 3? Odds are in this game, probably not.

New Word

"ho ho ho!" (eyes bulging) I couldn't believe it but he was saying this today when I gave him a Santa Mr. Potato Head I bought at Target half off.

New Word!

"ewwww yuck" That's considered two right?? lol

Ba-Ba

Damien's SLP came over Tuesday right as I came home with Alex and started picking her for head lice so I didn't get to sit in on his therapy. She felt so bad for me at the moment she said she would keep both boys busy with activities so I could get a start on Alex's hair.

Damien is as she thinks "trying" to make words. We're really not getting much new out of him but out of the blue he may just start saying a new sound. He is so good at making sounds of animals. It's just weird that he won't try saying any words. I don't know if he needs to see pictures to SAY a word? You show him a picture of an animal and he'll try sounding like it. If he sees some kind of an action going on like a plate falls on the floor. He'll say "uh oh!!"

His new sound last night was "baa baa" He just kept saying it over and over which was neat because he never has! Dave kept making him say it to me or scream it I should say so I would pick up that it was new. So when she comes next week I'll have another 2 syllable sound to tell her he's making.

DAS~Verbal Apraxia?

Damien's SLP stressed this week that she really thinks he has Verbal Apraxia. We discussed this before but now that he's nearing 2.5 yrs she wonders if that may be part of the problem. We played ball the other day here at the house and she would say "mine!" to have him roll the ball in which he would say "mamma!" then roll it. She'd say "me, my ball, mine!" and he would say "mamma!" and then roll the ball. When I think of it, she has to be right. I've told everyone for years everything is "dis" but I thought it was just the only word he could make but he's been making it ever since he was 10 months. It sounds like for now from her we just keep stimulating his mouth, do more aggressive ST, and praise him for whatever we can get new to come out of his mouth.

Little Clues

I think after experiencing so much with Dominic's issues, I'm picking up signs that Damien is following the same path on alot of the same problems Dominic has had. Either that or I'm just losing my mind. The speech thing by 18 months was pretty apparent. Lately though he's starting to show signs of SID (sensory Intergration Disorder) He has been itching his back raw lately. Cries when he hears loud sounds. He's only prefering a few foods and is extremely picky. He threw up last night as soon as I opened Mia's diaper. He threw up watching Dominic throw up at the dinner table last night and a few times before this. SID sucks y'all. I don't want two kids with it!!! I certainly don't want two kids at the table throwing up by certain tastes/textures we've asked them to try or by one seeing the other puke. (sigh)

Auditory Bombardment and Making Progress

It was definitely interesting this week with Damien's Speech Path. He got a headset that we are talking directly into a mic which keeps him focused looking at our mouths. She is trying 2 syllable words this week so she gave me a list of words to read to him twice a day along with the oral therapy toys to "wake up" his mouth with sensation. I told her after she had asked me about drooling that all the sudden I noticed that yeah he does drool a lot. She said she has noticed while being here he always has his mouth opened, it's like he doesn't know HOW to close it. Interesting. lol So our homework with the words is hopefully get him to say 2 syllables. On Hot dog after hearing the word about 40 times he did in fact say "ha....."and then did the tongue thrust spit thing to end it. She said that counts as 2 syllables because he tried. When we talk to him, she wants us to clap or tap out the word. For example: Hot- Dog (2 claps) Cow-boy (2 claps) Da-mi-en (3 claps) He caught on quickly though and so did Dominic (who sits in on his therapy for attention lol) that the claps separate parts of the word.

2 New Words Damien can now say... ha (hot) Boo! (said a lot during Halloween)

Auditory Bombardment

Damien took something caled a Hodson Speech Test the other day. Not sure of the results but it will be interesting to see. Next week the Speech Path will start something called auditory bombardment. I believe how this works is she will focus on one sound each week to see if we can get anything other then a vowel sound out of him. Basically drill letter sounds into his little brain if you will. We'll see.

Words at 28 months:
Yes, uh uh, dis, hi, yeah, ha ha, uh oh, mamma, dadda, boo, cheese, whoa,

Mouth Helpers

I am still at a loss about all this stimulation Damien needs for his mouth to be zapped into working mode. I just don't understand how it works. She says his mouth is just "dead" and needs to be woke up. Anyways now he has his own little oral stimulation box equiped with vibration toys, horns, whistles and teether things. He is eating crunchy crackers (to wake up his mouth)and other things like she'd like but still prefers the smooth foods like the yogurt, cottage cheese, applesauce, etc. But she is the SP and I will let her do her job. lol She gave me an oral grocery list of item I could buy and put in his box.

Intensive Speech Therapy

This is an update from my other blog. Damien's home visit today went well. Not only was Jeanie (developmental therapist) working with him but so was Linda (speech therapist) She worked with Damien when he was about 22 months old at the Early Intervention center and this summer at the summer centerbased speech playgroup I had him in so she's familar with him. I told them if they really wanted to get him talking that they were more than welcome to take him into Dominic's room to play with the train table because he loves playing on it with me or daddy, it gets him really excited so they did that. He probably said "dis, Yes, and uh uh" a few hundred times showing them Thomas trains and scooting them around the track. He had a great time.

Linda realizes that creative and manipulative play are not working because he's not imitating, he's not parroting, he's not jabbering like most kids would TRY to do. So we are going to cut out the developmental therapy because he seems to be doing better on everything else. He will have intensive speech therapy with Linda on Tuesdays around 12:45. Still playing but in a more controlled enviroment (sitting at the kitchen table) So that was that! I can't wait to see how next week goes!

Dominic and Damien

Well Monday was Dominic's first day at his new school. This is the school I worked really hard to get him in at our Grade School. It's not a Special Ed setting like before. He LOVES it. We hung out for about 1.5 hrs and watched how the day normally goes there. Dominic had so much fun showing off his little brother. It was cute. There were 5 other parents there and I did feel abit ackward at times. It's hard because you feel like you need to explain how he acts so they aren't automatically thinking, "what in the world is wrong with her kid!??" He was so excited and a bit loud, he would do what he was asked for about 30 seconds and then wanted to go somewhere else and he was making all sorts of laser sounds from Action figures. lol There are a few things though that I plan on writing a letter to his teachers about. I did explain the ADHD/ODD thing already but I haven't said anything about his sensitivity issues. When they put an art apron on him, he flipped out. He started screaming "IT'S SCRATCHING ME, IT'S SCRATCHING ME!" He was really upset. They were loosing the belts and trying to figure out what the problem was. Finally he stopped. I probably ought to make them aware of the sensitivity thing because I'm afraid after seeing a whole row of bongo drums they will pull those out and he'll run out the door crying! lol He hates certain touches, sounds, smells will make him throw up easily, textures on his tongue cause him to gag at EVERYTHING. For 2 years he had Kristi as his teacher and she knew every little unique detail of him so now I'm starting all over so we'll have to do alot of communicating with his teacher the next few months.

Then Damien had his first homevisit today and will have visits every Tuesday at 9 am. It went well and he really clicked with his teacher. I like her too! Very nice lady. She tried getting him to point out animals, they played ball, tired to get him to say anything different then his normal little "dis, uh oh, yeah, and whoa!" She's going to talk to some of the other ladies about his tongue thrust and see what we're going to do. His tongue always comes out when he says his few words. She thinks that it may be more tongue thrust than Verbal Apraxia. So... we'll have to see. Whichever it is, I can already tell he's got a long road of speech therapy ahead of him like his brother. This is much different than Dominic though because Dominic just wasn't talking! Damien says a few words but he's more like Sylvester the Cat when he says "Suffering Sucatash!" That's the best description I can give of Damien. lol

So that's about it! It's weird having one sorta leaving this journey and then entering it again with another little one. I have learned so much through all this. I think Early Childhood Development would be a great field to take up once my kids have entered school. Dominic has came a long way on his speech although he does have a lot of other things on his IEP to work on, he's made SO MUCH progress! I am so proud of him! Damien so far just thinks this is all fun and games! lol Although he cried the first few times being in Speech Playgroup during the summer, he loved it in the end. Today when she arrived this morning you could tell he was thinking, "cool! Someone else wants to play with me!"