Josh has been attending speech therapy for about a month now. We were pretty worried about him awhile back; he was almost two and his vocabulary seemed rather small and his pronunciation very poor. However, the speech therapy has been wonderful. His speech has improved dramatically; his vocabulary increased, and his pronunciation improved. He really seems to enjoy speaking now, and he even likes to be the one to say prayers at night or at dinner, which is something that Ben doesn't enjoy doing.
Today, Josh strung together a little sentence of three words - I think he said, "Thank you, Dana," (Dana is his speech therapist). He formulated the sentence himself, and wasn't prompted to say it, so it's quite a win. He loves Dana, and gets excited when he knows that he is going to speech therapy. I'm sure part of it is the toys that he gets to play with, but I think he enjoys having somebody who will play games with him. Amy and I aren't very good at that.
Speech therapy has been a learning experience for us, too. I'm learning how to help Josh improve his speech by changing my responses to him. If he says something that is not quite clear, rather than try to guess at what he is saying and fulfill his need or want, I tell him, "I don't understand," and then I suggest words that might match what he's asking for; I only get him what he wants after he has repeated the words. This way, he learns that words can be used to get him the things that he needs or wants, and grunting or crying will not. I think it has been very effective, and I'm so pleased to see how he is progressing.
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