Speech Therapy

Jack is now doing some Talk Tool speech therapy with exercises that target his oral muscles and breathing to help him build body awareness to make some of the sounds we are asking him to make.  Right now he gives open mouthed kisses.  Like most kids he is on a "pucker" learning curve.  He loves to sing so he opens his mouth and belts out an "ahh" along to the music.  His favourite these days is the "Itsy Bitsy Spider"  with the actions of course.  But those lips don't want to do any work!  So we came home with a little horn that he needs to blow 10 times a day focusing on bringing his lips together without his teeth or tongue working to stabilize the mouth-piece.  I am excited to experience more exercises with horns and straws that will help him understand how to move and breath properly to mimic speech sounds.   It is one thing for Jack to hear me make a sound and want to mimic it but what if he just doesn't know how to make his lips/tongue/jaw/breath do what it needs to do in the right sequence?  I think this program might really help Jack to progress with his speech by helping him learn how to make all his speaking parts work together.

Here is an interesting article called The Oral-Motor Myths of Down Syndrome. (Just click the second listing on the google search which is a pdf file of this article)

Jack also really likes to draw.  He is dangerous left unsupervised with an uncapped marker and if he runs out of paper...look out white couch.  Having older siblings around who always pick up their things, there are many markers to be found.  Jazzy has a special place in her heart for permanent markers.  So far most furniture has been spared and the only permanent marker incident occurred in her room.  As soon I hear the sound of the cap coming off of the marker I run.  Jack usually pops one off and then chucks it.  He doesn't have any more use for it!  That pop can wake me out of a dead sleep and then you have until the clatter sound of the lid hitting the ground to intercept and avoid some major graffiti!

I wish I could have snapped a photo of his emerald green mint smelly-markered legs!  Camera still out of order.

Sigh.

We were in looking at cameras the other day.  The new version of my camera has video capability.  But when you can replace the lens with a used one for $60  it is hard to justify the cost of a major upgrade.   Now if I could just find someone close by who wants to sell theirs to me!