I'm a bit behind here, but Ella's speech has been improving quite a bit. For about 1-2 months she's been favoring word-approximation type speech over sign, although she still uses sign for complex word.
She's still lacking ability to create r, s, sh, ch, th, f, v and several other sounds, and her use of "t" is absent in many words. However, she is willing to try to approximate most simple words.
Her speech is quite broken, and would not be readily understood by many who aren't familiar with early speech. However she still gets her point across to us. Typical examples of things she says now are "I wah mo coh key" (I want more cookies) "hu guh key key" (hug kity kitty). "uh oh pah pee" (uh oh, potty), and of course lots of "yeah" and "no" (both of which are reasonably well formed and most people should understand her).
Intonation is another area we will eventually have to work on. Her current use of pitch is a little strange, and at times humorous. For the most part, she always pronounces a given word with the same pitch pattern. "ma mi" (for mommy) is always pitched low, then exaggeratedly high. "Wheee" is always pronounced in a flat dead-pan tone (this can be quite funny when she sees a slide, and races over to it saying "Whee" in a robotic monotone..)
While this level of speech may not be much, the frequency of her talking is what's really the big difference. 6 months ago she used words only as a last resort, or when specifically asked. Now she is using spoken word on her own to make requests, answer questions, etc.
She's also starting to speak at a much louder volume. Previously everything spoken was very quiet, but she now occasionally speaks loud enough to be heard clearly in the next room over. (talking loud, but not shouting volume).
Anyway, that's my quick update, hope you all are well.
Showing posts with label speech. Show all posts
Showing posts with label speech. Show all posts
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Sorry for the lack of posts lately, but life has been a bit busy, and a lot of Ella's progress has been evolutionary, not revolutionary.
On the speech front, we've seen a lot of little things, but there is real progress there. For example her "no" is cleaned up to a point where most people can understand it, as opposed to the broken "nah ooh" (pronounced as two separate words) that she started with. She is also using a crude "yeah" (eYah!), which is good because she can now answer yes and no questions verbally (this is quite handy when driving... quickly glancing in the mirror at a light to read ASL signs is not exactly efficient.) She's also picked up a few more word approximations and is saying things like "I Wah mo". She's also gotten a lot more willing to make a real effort at pronouncing new words.
On the motor front, her climbing ability (and confidence to try) is vastly improved. She's now handling moderately complex playground obstacles like rope suspended bridges, rope ladders, vertical ladders of a few rungs, etc. She still doesn't have quite the agility of the average child her age, but she's definitely making good progress in motor skills.
When it comes to food, she's recently gotten out of her absolute refusal to try new foods. She's now eating some soft bread products (not just crackers/cereal), and even eating burgers (with the bun).
We've also got a planning meeting coming up in about two weeks for next year's schooling. I'll definitely have more to post about after that.
On the speech front, we've seen a lot of little things, but there is real progress there. For example her "no" is cleaned up to a point where most people can understand it, as opposed to the broken "nah ooh" (pronounced as two separate words) that she started with. She is also using a crude "yeah" (eYah!), which is good because she can now answer yes and no questions verbally (this is quite handy when driving... quickly glancing in the mirror at a light to read ASL signs is not exactly efficient.) She's also picked up a few more word approximations and is saying things like "I Wah mo
On the motor front, her climbing ability (and confidence to try) is vastly improved. She's now handling moderately complex playground obstacles like rope suspended bridges, rope ladders, vertical ladders of a few rungs, etc. She still doesn't have quite the agility of the average child her age, but she's definitely making good progress in motor skills.
When it comes to food, she's recently gotten out of her absolute refusal to try new foods. She's now eating some soft bread products (not just crackers/cereal), and even eating burgers (with the bun).
We've also got a planning meeting coming up in about two weeks for next year's schooling. I'll definitely have more to post about after that.
Monday, March 22, 2010
Speech, Ella's way...
Ella continues to make good leaps and bounds lately, as we've seen ever since Ella got her glasses. She's speaking more and her motor skills are making good progress.
On the gross motor front, Ella's learned to make small forward jumps in order to hop her way across the floor. Previously she'd only been jumping straight up-and-down. This is good because it takes a lot more confidence and balance skill to jump forward than it does to jump in place. Her climbing is getting a lot better, but she's still behind in this area, but that will come in time with better balance.
Speech-wise, Ella is now up to using a total of 8-12 spoken words and word approximations, which vocabulary wise is more on par with a 16-month old than a 3.75 year old. Her diction is also pretty crude, again like the younger child.
However, one interesting twist is that Ella is already putting these together to make sentences, and also combining them with ASL signs. This is very amusing, because usually children with such a limited vocabulary only use single words. Hearing Ella very roughly say "Hep Meh" (help me) is an interesting contrast. Her speech ability is really basic, but it contrasts with her more comparatively advanced conceptual language abilities.
Of course, we're used to out-of-order development but it continues to amuse me.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Additional speech therapist...
Last week we started taking Ella to see a private speech therapist, as a supplement to the school-based therapy she gets right now. So far she's had two visits, but these have mostly focused on evaluating Ella's existing speech in detail (using parts of a Kaufman Speech Praxis test).
This isn't to say the school system isn't doing a good job, but the school environment and private therapy settings offer different advantages. The school environment offers a lot of other kids her age to model from, as well as a mixture of both group and one-on-one speech therapy. However, neither of us are present at school, and we do not have frequent interactions with her therapists. This means that our at-home efforts are a little unguided and only sync-up with the school once a month or so.
The private therapy, on the other hand, is all one-on-one and there's no peers to learn from. However, one of us attends each session, and her therapist intends to start giving us plans for at-home therapy tactics.
Adding another therapist now also seems very appropriate. Since she got her glasses she's made a lot of progress in the "raw fundamentals" of speech. This seems to us (and her school therapists agree) to be a very good time to increase the intensity of her therapy and catch her up a bit now that she's starting to pick things up faster.
As for her speech progress, we've recently seen several new bits of speech progress emerge:
-she combines "hi" with a name to form a two-word greeting. (Hi Dada)
-she uses a lot more different letter combinations than before in her babbling.
-she's started jargoning where she's stringing together a stream of different syllables, rather than just repeating the same one or two. ("nabooka dooga aeee!" instead of "booka booka booka")
Of course, there's lots of things she's still having trouble with, such as sounds that involve bringing the tip of your tongue up (t, l, etc.), sounds using the teeth (f, v, th, s) and most sound combinations that involve going from an open jaw to a mostly closed one. But that's what we're all working on.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
catching the blog up...
Ok, first a little oldish news that I haven't relayed to the blog:
At a meeting with Ella's OT, she suggested that Ella may have depth perception issues, and we might want to take her to a developmental optometrist. We took that as good advice and the results were that Ella is severely farsighted (+7.5 d), and can't focus on things close to her. As a "stepping stone" the optometrist suggested getting glasses at +6.5 see how she does with them, and visit for a follow-up (which is coming up in a week or 2 now).
Now for the rest:
Since getting the glasses, Ella has greatly improved in several areas, particularly in motor ability. The ability to focus on things close to her has given her a better ability to traverse stairs, jump, and the confidence to run around. Her general activity level is also up quite a bit. It has also increased her attention span for hands-on activities etc. We also expect this will have a positive impact on her speech, as she'll be able to see the details of how we move our mouths and tongues while speaking. She still has some motor obstacles to speech (i.e.: she cannot curl her tongue upwards yet), but the glasses at least remove one obstacle.
Of course, we recently had her mid-term IEP meeting with her teachers, where we plan her education goals, therapy levels, etc. Unfortunately, all of the review was written before her glasses arrived, and some of her goals are likely to be rather low now that she can see better. On the upside, we've got another meeting to discuss summer semester soon, and her teacher mentioned we may amend her IEP at that meeting if needed.
At a meeting with Ella's OT, she suggested that Ella may have depth perception issues, and we might want to take her to a developmental optometrist. We took that as good advice and the results were that Ella is severely farsighted (+7.5 d), and can't focus on things close to her. As a "stepping stone" the optometrist suggested getting glasses at +6.5 see how she does with them, and visit for a follow-up (which is coming up in a week or 2 now).
Now for the rest:
Since getting the glasses, Ella has greatly improved in several areas, particularly in motor ability. The ability to focus on things close to her has given her a better ability to traverse stairs, jump, and the confidence to run around. Her general activity level is also up quite a bit. It has also increased her attention span for hands-on activities etc. We also expect this will have a positive impact on her speech, as she'll be able to see the details of how we move our mouths and tongues while speaking. She still has some motor obstacles to speech (i.e.: she cannot curl her tongue upwards yet), but the glasses at least remove one obstacle.
Of course, we recently had her mid-term IEP meeting with her teachers, where we plan her education goals, therapy levels, etc. Unfortunately, all of the review was written before her glasses arrived, and some of her goals are likely to be rather low now that she can see better. On the upside, we've got another meeting to discuss summer semester soon, and her teacher mentioned we may amend her IEP at that meeting if needed.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
brief news bits..
Just a little quickie here:
Ella's been sick for the past week or so with bronchitis. However, she's finishing up a course of antibiotics, and it is clearing out now.
Ella also seems to be working on a speech approximation for "bye bye", although at this point it is little more than "buh buh". On the plus side, she's continuing with the use of ma ma, da da, and og (frog). She also frequently uses a spoken "I" mixed into her signs, and very rarely she says "Hi". All of this is really good news, as it means her spoken vocabulary is growing. In the past we've seen patterns where a new sound replaces an old one.
Ella has also taken to a lot of play activities that are good for balance and strength. Lots of jumping, bouncing, crab walking, etc. She's even starting to work on a broad jump, not just a vertical hop (I think this is her teachers in action, but I have not directly asked them).
Ella's been sick for the past week or so with bronchitis. However, she's finishing up a course of antibiotics, and it is clearing out now.
Ella also seems to be working on a speech approximation for "bye bye", although at this point it is little more than "buh buh". On the plus side, she's continuing with the use of ma ma, da da, and og (frog). She also frequently uses a spoken "I" mixed into her signs, and very rarely she says "Hi". All of this is really good news, as it means her spoken vocabulary is growing. In the past we've seen patterns where a new sound replaces an old one.
Ella has also taken to a lot of play activities that are good for balance and strength. Lots of jumping, bouncing, crab walking, etc. She's even starting to work on a broad jump, not just a vertical hop (I think this is her teachers in action, but I have not directly asked them).
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Tech-speak device and speech news.
Again, I'm a bit behind in updating the blog, but the holidays always make life a bit busy. So, with that asside, here's a quick update of what's been going on.
First, Ella's school has sent home a Tech/Speak device. This is essentially a board of buttons with pictures on them, and when Ella pushes the buttons, it speaks words. The hope is that it will make her realize that spoken-word can help her communicate with more people, thus encourage her to work on transitioning from signing to speaking.
As for speech, Ella's had a few new words/word aproximations emerge over the holiday. In addition to "da da" and "og" (frog), she's now using "ma ma" (which she had a long time ago, but disappeared for a year), and "ah ah ooh" (uh-oh). What seems most positive to me is she very quickly started using these words appropriately, because she already has the concepts of how to use language down from her signing. This makes me very hopeful that once we can break through the physical co-ordination of her mouth, she'll fall rapidly into speaking.
In any event, we all had a great Thanksgiving, and I hope you all did too.
First, Ella's school has sent home a Tech/Speak device. This is essentially a board of buttons with pictures on them, and when Ella pushes the buttons, it speaks words. The hope is that it will make her realize that spoken-word can help her communicate with more people, thus encourage her to work on transitioning from signing to speaking.
As for speech, Ella's had a few new words/word aproximations emerge over the holiday. In addition to "da da" and "og" (frog), she's now using "ma ma" (which she had a long time ago, but disappeared for a year), and "ah ah ooh" (uh-oh). What seems most positive to me is she very quickly started using these words appropriately, because she already has the concepts of how to use language down from her signing. This makes me very hopeful that once we can break through the physical co-ordination of her mouth, she'll fall rapidly into speaking.
In any event, we all had a great Thanksgiving, and I hope you all did too.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Surgery delay, potty training, and general updates..
Ok, first, Ella's surgery (that was supposed to go off last Weds) got rescheduled for October. Earlier last week she came down with a cold, and that added unnecessary risk to the surgery. (mostly because they need to put a tube in her throat during the procedure, and that doesn't mix so well with coughs and inflamed throats).
On the progress front, this weekend Ella spent all of her awake time in regular underwear, and had no accidents all weekend! She's actually very happy to be in underwear now, so it looks we're breaking through the PT barrier that the flu put in our way last winter. (we almost had her daytime PTed, but then a flu or flu-like illness struck, and Ella became afraid of underwear.)
On the speech front, Ella continues to chatter babbles at us, and continues to be quite prolific in it. She'll now say "I" and "Hi", although the distinction between the two is blurred. She'll also occasionally form "Doga" for Dog. Her babbles include "Da", "Dooga", "Tka/Tooka", "Ga", "Ra", "P", "Ba", "Ha", along with all (or nearly all...) the vowel sounds.
Anyway, just wanted to get a little news up on the blog, hope you're all well!
On the progress front, this weekend Ella spent all of her awake time in regular underwear, and had no accidents all weekend! She's actually very happy to be in underwear now, so it looks we're breaking through the PT barrier that the flu put in our way last winter. (we almost had her daytime PTed, but then a flu or flu-like illness struck, and Ella became afraid of underwear.)
On the speech front, Ella continues to chatter babbles at us, and continues to be quite prolific in it. She'll now say "I" and "Hi", although the distinction between the two is blurred. She'll also occasionally form "Doga" for Dog. Her babbles include "Da", "Dooga", "Tka/Tooka", "Ga", "Ra", "P", "Ba", "Ha", along with all (or nearly all...) the vowel sounds.
Anyway, just wanted to get a little news up on the blog, hope you're all well!
Friday, September 4, 2009
Oh the many sundry things..
It's been a long time since I've updated how Ella's doing, so here's some quick general bits..
Talking - Ella now occasionally uses a few crudely formed words with purpose. However, she's more inclined to use them as general bables than with any purpose. The most notable exception to this is saying "I" in the middle of signing "may I be excused".
Eating - Ella is doing really good with self feeding, and can now spoon her own cereal out of a bowl. She'll also pick up and bite chunks out of food that she strongly likes, such as fries and nuggets, although less favored foods still need to be cut up for her.
Motor - Ella's gotten pretty good at jumping (over, and over and over again) in-place in little short hops, and getting on and off her tricycle. Her motor is generally doing pretty good, although she is a little bit behind her peers in more ambitious climbing and balance adventures.
School - Ella went back school this past Thursday. She's now in a preschool class instead of a toddler class (higher age group) and is now in a regular early-childhood special ed program, not a MINC (higher development level). The later means that she's not with any of her former classmates, which is unfortunate, but she's doing fine with it.
Potty - Well, we're still working on this one. Ella does pretty well at using the potty, but her enthusiasm for wearing underwear instead of diapers varies wildly (often very resistant to wearing one or the other, usually wanting the exact opposite of what works for the planned day)
Anyway, hope you're all well, I just wanted to get a quick update of how things are going.
Talking - Ella now occasionally uses a few crudely formed words with purpose. However, she's more inclined to use them as general bables than with any purpose. The most notable exception to this is saying "I" in the middle of signing "may I be excused".
Eating - Ella is doing really good with self feeding, and can now spoon her own cereal out of a bowl. She'll also pick up and bite chunks out of food that she strongly likes, such as fries and nuggets, although less favored foods still need to be cut up for her.
Motor - Ella's gotten pretty good at jumping (over, and over and over again) in-place in little short hops, and getting on and off her tricycle. Her motor is generally doing pretty good, although she is a little bit behind her peers in more ambitious climbing and balance adventures.
School - Ella went back school this past Thursday. She's now in a preschool class instead of a toddler class (higher age group) and is now in a regular early-childhood special ed program, not a MINC (higher development level). The later means that she's not with any of her former classmates, which is unfortunate, but she's doing fine with it.
Potty - Well, we're still working on this one. Ella does pretty well at using the potty, but her enthusiasm for wearing underwear instead of diapers varies wildly (often very resistant to wearing one or the other, usually wanting the exact opposite of what works for the planned day)
Anyway, hope you're all well, I just wanted to get a quick update of how things are going.
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Blowing bubbles..
After recently figuring out how to purse her lips to blow on things with a focused stream (instead of just going "Ha" at them) over the weekend, on Tuesday Ella figured out how to use this skill to dip a bubble wand, pull it out and blow bubbles.
It's not a huge step, but it's progress in her oral motor skills, and her application of them. Since that's an area where she's been progressing very slowly, this makes me very happy.
It's not a huge step, but it's progress in her oral motor skills, and her application of them. Since that's an area where she's been progressing very slowly, this makes me very happy.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
slow but steady progress
I haven't posted in a while, mostly because nothing "unusually exciting" has happened with Ella lately.
Of course there's lots of small cute things she does every day, and perhaps I should make a point to post more of those. Thinking of that, here's one now:
A couple of nights ago, when Ella got in bed after her bath, she started giggling and shaking her head all over the place while laying down. This, of course, made a giant mess of her freshly combed hair, and I commented "Oh, you're going to be fuzzy tomorrow". She immediately stopped, looked at me, and started stroking my beard. "Yes, fuzzy, like daddy's beard". It was immensely cute.
As for progress, Color wise, Ella's starting to get the hang of identifying and signing black and brown, although these are still a bit rough and she'll sometimes label black things as being brown.
Motor wise, Ella's continuing to get more confident and bold climbing on play structures, stepping over things, jumping, etc. It's all very gradual, but looking back at even a month ago, her ability to navigate barriers is much smoother now.
On the speech front, Ella's continuing to babble, and it's still mostly "Da". However we are starting to get her to vary the sounds a bit. She's sometimes distinguishing vowel sounds to make word approximations. Most of the time it's all just "da" or "da da", but sometimes she'll intentionally shift towards "eh-da!" (ella), "die" (bye), and rarely she'll even make a little twist towards "Dahn" (done) although it's still more like "Dahd".
We've also recently seen a return of B and R sounds, although these are rare just like "tooka" "Ha" and "Ga" are.
At any rate, I hope you all are well! Hope to see you all soon.
Of course there's lots of small cute things she does every day, and perhaps I should make a point to post more of those. Thinking of that, here's one now:
A couple of nights ago, when Ella got in bed after her bath, she started giggling and shaking her head all over the place while laying down. This, of course, made a giant mess of her freshly combed hair, and I commented "Oh, you're going to be fuzzy tomorrow". She immediately stopped, looked at me, and started stroking my beard. "Yes, fuzzy, like daddy's beard". It was immensely cute.
As for progress, Color wise, Ella's starting to get the hang of identifying and signing black and brown, although these are still a bit rough and she'll sometimes label black things as being brown.
Motor wise, Ella's continuing to get more confident and bold climbing on play structures, stepping over things, jumping, etc. It's all very gradual, but looking back at even a month ago, her ability to navigate barriers is much smoother now.
On the speech front, Ella's continuing to babble, and it's still mostly "Da". However we are starting to get her to vary the sounds a bit. She's sometimes distinguishing vowel sounds to make word approximations. Most of the time it's all just "da" or "da da", but sometimes she'll intentionally shift towards "eh-da!" (ella), "die" (bye), and rarely she'll even make a little twist towards "Dahn" (done) although it's still more like "Dahd".
We've also recently seen a return of B and R sounds, although these are rare just like "tooka" "Ha" and "Ga" are.
At any rate, I hope you all are well! Hope to see you all soon.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Back to school, and sign list..
Well, Ella's back to school following spring break, and she seems quite happy to be back at school. Today she even showed us a new sign related to school. We were at dinner and she signed "learn", and when asked about it she signed "learn - school". I guess our semi-recent addition of signing time vol 13 has a lot to do with that.
In general Ella continues to become more and more sociable, and communicative, and she continues to babble a lot and will repeatedly make specific babble sounds when prompted (Da, Hu, Gu, tooka, dooga). That's good because it demonstrates she has the idea of making specific sounds for a specific purpose. While she does a few other babbles (bu, and rarely pu), the odds of her echoing them back at your request is pretty low (15%?)
I've also converted my list of Ella's signs to a google doc, and I've added a link to it in the links section on the right, or you can just jump from here. I figure that will be useful for anyone interacting with Ella and wanting to know which signs she knows. It also has notes about some of her modifications to various signs.
In general Ella continues to become more and more sociable, and communicative, and she continues to babble a lot and will repeatedly make specific babble sounds when prompted (Da, Hu, Gu, tooka, dooga). That's good because it demonstrates she has the idea of making specific sounds for a specific purpose. While she does a few other babbles (bu, and rarely pu), the odds of her echoing them back at your request is pretty low (15%?)
I've also converted my list of Ella's signs to a google doc, and I've added a link to it in the links section on the right, or you can just jump from here. I figure that will be useful for anyone interacting with Ella and wanting to know which signs she knows. It also has notes about some of her modifications to various signs.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Going to school...
Whew, it has, once again, been a while since I've posted.
Recently it has been time for Ella's progress to be formally reviewed by her therapists, and to revise her education plan. So there's been lots of meetings, testing, planning, etc going on.
As a summary of her evaluation, Ella is more-or-less in the same relative place she was last time she got evaluated. Her motor skills are 7-9 months behind where they "should" be, which is roughly how far behind they were before. Of course, she's older now so that's less of a percentage than before. She is most severely behind in expressive communication skills, as she's still not speaking on any consistent basis. Here she's behind by approximately 18 months, and although that doesn't count her signing, she's still behind even if you were to count them.
And of course, all that evaluation has led to a new education plan for Ella. Currently Ella is in a home based therapy arrangement, where the therapists come to our home for one-on-one sessions with Ella. The plan now is to transition Ella into a group therapy arrangement at a school. This would normally happen anyway when she turns three, but we're doing it a tad bit early. The basic thinking here is the increased exposure to peers will help her model off others, and that's a philosophy that makes sense to both of us as parents.
So, starting in two weeks, Ella is going to be going to a local elementary school for a class called MINC-T (multiple intense needs class - toddler). She'll be going 5 days a week for 2 and a half hours a day. We've already had a chance to go to the school, visit the classroom, meet the teacher, therapists, and most of her fellow students and their parents. So far I'm reasonably impressed with everything.
At any rate, it's getting late (or early) and I best be off to bed.
Recently it has been time for Ella's progress to be formally reviewed by her therapists, and to revise her education plan. So there's been lots of meetings, testing, planning, etc going on.
As a summary of her evaluation, Ella is more-or-less in the same relative place she was last time she got evaluated. Her motor skills are 7-9 months behind where they "should" be, which is roughly how far behind they were before. Of course, she's older now so that's less of a percentage than before. She is most severely behind in expressive communication skills, as she's still not speaking on any consistent basis. Here she's behind by approximately 18 months, and although that doesn't count her signing, she's still behind even if you were to count them.
And of course, all that evaluation has led to a new education plan for Ella. Currently Ella is in a home based therapy arrangement, where the therapists come to our home for one-on-one sessions with Ella. The plan now is to transition Ella into a group therapy arrangement at a school. This would normally happen anyway when she turns three, but we're doing it a tad bit early. The basic thinking here is the increased exposure to peers will help her model off others, and that's a philosophy that makes sense to both of us as parents.
So, starting in two weeks, Ella is going to be going to a local elementary school for a class called MINC-T (multiple intense needs class - toddler). She'll be going 5 days a week for 2 and a half hours a day. We've already had a chance to go to the school, visit the classroom, meet the teacher, therapists, and most of her fellow students and their parents. So far I'm reasonably impressed with everything.
At any rate, it's getting late (or early) and I best be off to bed.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
progress
It's been a while since I've posted about Ella's progress, so here's a quick post on what she's up to.
In the signs department, Ella's now up to 95 signs I've got documented, but I'm probably missing a few. She now picks them up fairly rapidly if used in context.
In the eating department, Ella still isn't using utensils, but she's very good with an open cup. She can even pick up an open cup one handed now and drink from it (with some chance of spilling). She's starting to be willing to pick up large foods and bite chunks off, as she did with the flatbread, but she still needs many foods cut up for her.
We've also been potty training Ella recently, with fairly good success so far, largely thanks to mentalmother. We've been training for about a week now, and she still has a lot of accidents, and sometimes she gets a bit stubborn about it, but on the whole she's taking fairly well to it.
The past two weeks have also been very talkative for Ella. She's not using words routinely, but we're getting a lot of babbling and a variety of different sounds. In general she seems to be experimenting with her mouth a bit, which is a good thing.
Anyway, I best be going, hope you're all well.
In the signs department, Ella's now up to 95 signs I've got documented, but I'm probably missing a few. She now picks them up fairly rapidly if used in context.
In the eating department, Ella still isn't using utensils, but she's very good with an open cup. She can even pick up an open cup one handed now and drink from it (with some chance of spilling). She's starting to be willing to pick up large foods and bite chunks off, as she did with the flatbread, but she still needs many foods cut up for her.
We've also been potty training Ella recently, with fairly good success so far, largely thanks to mentalmother. We've been training for about a week now, and she still has a lot of accidents, and sometimes she gets a bit stubborn about it, but on the whole she's taking fairly well to it.
The past two weeks have also been very talkative for Ella. She's not using words routinely, but we're getting a lot of babbling and a variety of different sounds. In general she seems to be experimenting with her mouth a bit, which is a good thing.
Anyway, I best be going, hope you're all well.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
General misc news..
Sorry I haven't posted lately, but with the holidays and all, a lot was going on.
Regardless, on the Ella front the news is mostly small things.
She had a wonderful holiday, and particularly loved the tree. Every morning she'd come out and sign tree, then star. After we took it down, she would ask about it for several days by signing tree.
In the progress department, her signing continues to progress. She's now up to 90 signs, and we're working on colors. At this point, a lot of her signs are distorted to be similar to others she already knows, but in context we can figure them out quickly enough.
Recently she's been on an upswing of babbling again, which is good. She'd slid off her speaking for a while there, devolving at one point to everything being "rah-rah". It's good that the variety of sounds is back again, but this still remains an area of concern for us.
She's also starting to make "play noises", such as "num num num" when pretending to eat off a spoon, and making slurping noises while pretending to drink. This is also a good thing, as it's using a vocalization for a specific purpose, and provides some foundation for us to build on while working on speech.
Gross motor wise I've been off-and-on working with her to try teach her how to jump. I've managed to get her up off her heels, but no real off-the-ground jumping yet. It's more like standing up really fast at this point. Other than that she's doing very well motor wise. I don't know if these have been mentioned before, but she climbs on and off of the couch without any help, crouches down to pick things up without difficulty, etc. I'm overall quite pleased with her gross motor progress.
Anyway, take care all, and I hope your holidays were as bright as ours
Regardless, on the Ella front the news is mostly small things.
She had a wonderful holiday, and particularly loved the tree. Every morning she'd come out and sign tree, then star. After we took it down, she would ask about it for several days by signing tree.
In the progress department, her signing continues to progress. She's now up to 90 signs, and we're working on colors. At this point, a lot of her signs are distorted to be similar to others she already knows, but in context we can figure them out quickly enough.
Recently she's been on an upswing of babbling again, which is good. She'd slid off her speaking for a while there, devolving at one point to everything being "rah-rah". It's good that the variety of sounds is back again, but this still remains an area of concern for us.
She's also starting to make "play noises", such as "num num num" when pretending to eat off a spoon, and making slurping noises while pretending to drink. This is also a good thing, as it's using a vocalization for a specific purpose, and provides some foundation for us to build on while working on speech.
Gross motor wise I've been off-and-on working with her to try teach her how to jump. I've managed to get her up off her heels, but no real off-the-ground jumping yet. It's more like standing up really fast at this point. Other than that she's doing very well motor wise. I don't know if these have been mentioned before, but she climbs on and off of the couch without any help, crouches down to pick things up without difficulty, etc. I'm overall quite pleased with her gross motor progress.
Anyway, take care all, and I hope your holidays were as bright as ours
Friday, September 12, 2008
Toddler bed, signs, etc
Ella did something a little different last night. After we put her in bed and left the room, she stood up in bed and started screaming her head off. Since this was very out of the ordinary and she was completely hysterical, we went in and calmed her down.
After some crackers, water, and more book reading, we put her down again and left the room. Almost immediately she stood up and started screaming again. This time however, she got back down, went to the side of her bed and got out. From there she walked over to her door, touched it, walked back and got back in bed. Then she stopped crying.
Yesterday at her naptime was the first time Ella had gotten out of bed with nobody watching. Apparently she just wanted to prove to herself she could do it again.
In other news, she's up to 27 signs now, and one of her newer signs is "potty", and she's starting to occasionally use the sign to request to use the potty.
She's also starting to be more responsive to our attempts to shape her vocalizations, and I managed to get her to say "duck" last night. This brings her up to 4 spoken words: bubuh (bubble), ella, dada, and duck. However we haven't heard her say bubble in a couple weeks, so she's really only using 3 at the moment.
Regardess, she communicates her needs to us fairly well using the signs, and she's actually very receptive to our requests. Of course, she's two so she might just do what we ask for 2 seconds and then go back to whatever she was doing before, but she nearly always follows simple directions when you ask.
After some crackers, water, and more book reading, we put her down again and left the room. Almost immediately she stood up and started screaming again. This time however, she got back down, went to the side of her bed and got out. From there she walked over to her door, touched it, walked back and got back in bed. Then she stopped crying.
Yesterday at her naptime was the first time Ella had gotten out of bed with nobody watching. Apparently she just wanted to prove to herself she could do it again.
In other news, she's up to 27 signs now, and one of her newer signs is "potty", and she's starting to occasionally use the sign to request to use the potty.
She's also starting to be more responsive to our attempts to shape her vocalizations, and I managed to get her to say "duck" last night. This brings her up to 4 spoken words: bubuh (bubble), ella, dada, and duck. However we haven't heard her say bubble in a couple weeks, so she's really only using 3 at the moment.
Regardess, she communicates her needs to us fairly well using the signs, and she's actually very receptive to our requests. Of course, she's two so she might just do what we ask for 2 seconds and then go back to whatever she was doing before, but she nearly always follows simple directions when you ask.
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
May I have a word please?
Or, well, two actually.
Ella now has two verbalized words! She's finally speaking!
Her first word is "buhbuh", for bubble. Her second word is her own name, Ella, although it sometimes comes out "eya" or "lala". This is a very good thing, and on top of it, Ella has been engaging in a fair amount of imitative behavior lately, which hopefully means we'll be able to teach her more.
We're not really sure what has brought all this progress on, it could be that she was just ready, or it could be some of the changes we've made lately in therapy or diet. But whatever it is, we're going to keep doing it.
One thing we changed in mid June was we started giving Ella a highly purified cod liver oil supplement. Admittedly the best study (Oxford-Durham) I previously found suggested there are no motor benefits, only behavioral. However at least one study that wasn't as well controlled (Stordy 1997, summarized by Richardson) suggests significant motor benefits.
Thus far we've been keeping the dose low, 1/4 tsp a day providing 155mg DHA, and 102mg EPA. Cod liver oil can cause problems with too much Vitamin A, but this dosage is under 20% of her daily vitamin A and has only traces of Vitamin D. Needless to say, it certainly doesn't seem to be hurting, and differs from most of the Omega3's Ella's gotten so far in popular supplemented kids foods which tend to only contain DHA.
Ella now has two verbalized words! She's finally speaking!
Her first word is "buhbuh", for bubble. Her second word is her own name, Ella, although it sometimes comes out "eya" or "lala". This is a very good thing, and on top of it, Ella has been engaging in a fair amount of imitative behavior lately, which hopefully means we'll be able to teach her more.
We're not really sure what has brought all this progress on, it could be that she was just ready, or it could be some of the changes we've made lately in therapy or diet. But whatever it is, we're going to keep doing it.
One thing we changed in mid June was we started giving Ella a highly purified cod liver oil supplement. Admittedly the best study (Oxford-Durham) I previously found suggested there are no motor benefits, only behavioral. However at least one study that wasn't as well controlled (Stordy 1997, summarized by Richardson) suggests significant motor benefits.
Thus far we've been keeping the dose low, 1/4 tsp a day providing 155mg DHA, and 102mg EPA. Cod liver oil can cause problems with too much Vitamin A, but this dosage is under 20% of her daily vitamin A and has only traces of Vitamin D. Needless to say, it certainly doesn't seem to be hurting, and differs from most of the Omega3's Ella's gotten so far in popular supplemented kids foods which tend to only contain DHA.
Friday, July 18, 2008
Recent progress, more walking/babling.
Ok, I've been *really* busy lately, but I really feel bad about not blogging lately.
In any event, Ella is continuing to progress albeit at her own pace.
In the walking department, Ella is starting to show more bravery about walking on her own. She's still not fully walking independently, but without hesitation she'll take 6' "jumps" between objects. She also tends to not be constantly touching things when walking along them, instead walking with a hand hovering near things, but not on them. Our current gross motor work is focused on developing the ability to stand up in the middle of the floor, and improving her climbing.
In the speech department, Ella has been starting to use vocal sounds in relation to items, like "buh" in relation to bubbles. She doesn't do it all the time, but we do see it occasionally.
In any event, we've got a lot of preparation to do for the weekend, so I best head to work so I can head home sooner.
In any event, Ella is continuing to progress albeit at her own pace.
In the walking department, Ella is starting to show more bravery about walking on her own. She's still not fully walking independently, but without hesitation she'll take 6' "jumps" between objects. She also tends to not be constantly touching things when walking along them, instead walking with a hand hovering near things, but not on them. Our current gross motor work is focused on developing the ability to stand up in the middle of the floor, and improving her climbing.
In the speech department, Ella has been starting to use vocal sounds in relation to items, like "buh" in relation to bubbles. She doesn't do it all the time, but we do see it occasionally.
In any event, we've got a lot of preparation to do for the weekend, so I best head to work so I can head home sooner.
Sunday, June 1, 2008
Progress, etc..
First, sorry it's been forever since I've posted. Ella's been continuing to make progress, but it's lots of smaller things, with no "big items" since my last posting.
First, her special educator has shifted our activities towards increasing Ella's sensory stimulation. This tactic has been fairly successful. In the past, Ella alternated between making progress in motor and communication, completely stalling progress in one while progressing in the other. With the stimulation exercises, she seems to be progressing in both at the same time.
On the motor front, Ella has progressed in skill, but her courage levels have devolved a bit. Her maximum walking distance is much shorter than it was, only 5 feet or so between parents. However her skills are increasing. She's now readily getting herself down from standing onto her hands-and-feet using inanimate objects to brace herself with one hand. She's also fairly regularly letting go with both hands to play with toys while she stands.
However, she's still not willing to stand without being near a hand-hold, and she's not walking around freely yet.
On the communication front, her sign vocabulary is continuing to grow. She's got 5 signs she uses regularly, and is "close" on another 3 or 4. Her babbling is increasing constantly, but she doesn't yet use any of it with apparent intent.
Anyway, I hope you're all well, and I'll hopefully post again soon.
First, her special educator has shifted our activities towards increasing Ella's sensory stimulation. This tactic has been fairly successful. In the past, Ella alternated between making progress in motor and communication, completely stalling progress in one while progressing in the other. With the stimulation exercises, she seems to be progressing in both at the same time.
On the motor front, Ella has progressed in skill, but her courage levels have devolved a bit. Her maximum walking distance is much shorter than it was, only 5 feet or so between parents. However her skills are increasing. She's now readily getting herself down from standing onto her hands-and-feet using inanimate objects to brace herself with one hand. She's also fairly regularly letting go with both hands to play with toys while she stands.
However, she's still not willing to stand without being near a hand-hold, and she's not walking around freely yet.
On the communication front, her sign vocabulary is continuing to grow. She's got 5 signs she uses regularly, and is "close" on another 3 or 4. Her babbling is increasing constantly, but she doesn't yet use any of it with apparent intent.
Anyway, I hope you're all well, and I'll hopefully post again soon.
Saturday, August 4, 2007
A starting point...
For those of you who haven't been following Mental Mother, or speaking to me in person, let me catch you up a bit.
Our daughter Ella is currently 1 year old, and has some developmental delays. A lot of this blog, for the time being, is going to be involved in communicating her progress to friends and family.
She's been evaluated by the local early intervention program sponsored by the school system. The evaluation shoes she has some developmental delays, most significantly in gross motor development (ie: skills involving large movements of the body like crawling, walking, etc). She also has a less substantial delay in communication skills (the ELAP test winds up placing the delays in multiple categories, however the cause of all of them would appear to be communication. See mental mother for more details on this)
Her fine motor development is fine and tested as age appropriate. For her age she has a good "pincer grasp" and hand-eye coordination, etc. Ella also tested fine in cognitive development and problem solving skills. Also, baring being tired, she is quite sociable and enjoys playing with people. There is occasional stranger anxiety, but she generally plays with "strangers" if we're nearby and are calm.
Although not definite, as only time will tell, based on the above Ella's delays are probably not the result of any major disorders. (ie: she's got good cognition and problem solving, so she's probably not mentally retarded, add in her sociable nature and she's not likely on any severe part of the autistic spectrum. Her fine motor development suggests there's no broad palsy or cerebellum issues.)
Thus far she has been responding very well to her current therapy sessions for gross motor development. We've met with a with a physical therapist 3 times, including her assessment visit, but even at the initial assessment the PT left us with some suggested activities to work on.
In general, Ella has good strength development, and to quote the PT "many good building blocks" for gross motor skills, but several other basic skills are missing.
Prior to starting, some of the building blocks Ella already had are: Standing while holding onto things, rolling onto her side to grab toys (but never a full roll, nor a roll off of the stomach), and grabbing onto your hands and using them to pull herself up to sitting.
Right at the start of her eval, but before we'd worked with the PT, she also learned to:
- extend the pulling up on your hands to pull herself up, stiff-legged, into a standing position.
- while sitting, if you put your hands on her shoulder blades and braced her from flipping over backwards she could push herself up to standing with leg power alone. However, even faced with something to grab onto, she'd leave her hands at her sides.
(Neither of those is a useful skill alone, but if you combine them...)
Thus far we have been working on the following things with the PT:
1) Rolling. Ella originally rolled both ways on-time, but stopped shortly after she started. Very quickly she regained the ability to roll if you simply moved one hand into the right place (in front of her, and slightly off-center towards the opposite side.) Recently she started doing this without our help.
2) Deeply bending over to reach toys. We've been teaching Ella how to pull one foot in so she's sitting in a "figure 4" so she can bend deeply to extend her reach from sitting.
3) Tolerating "tummy time" - Ella has always hated being on her stomach. We're now doing things to help her not immediately become upset if placed on her stomach. Little things like always putting her down on her stomach, even if we roll her over right away. This appears to be working well. Even though she still sometimes immediately objects to being on her stomach, she does now generally tolerate it, at least for a little while (ie: 1 minute), and sometimes for more extended periods (ie: 15-20 minutes).
4) Pulling up to standing from an elevated seat. If you sit "Indian style" on the floor and sit Ella on your knee with her feet on the floor, she can grab onto an object nearby and pull herself up to standing. We started off aiding her by bouncing her a bit, but she can now do this with no aid.
5) Kneeling. We're spending time getting her used to playing while kneeling, as this get her used to a position that is important in a lot of transition movements. She seems to do fine with this, although she does eventually tire of it.
6) "plopping" to sit - This is mostly an exercise in getting Ella to realize that not all forms of falling from standing are painful. I've been successful with this a few times, but most attempts result in her resisting by "stiff-boarding" her back or pulling herself back up to stand.
7) shifting from lying down to sitting. This is also one we're still working on. The idea is you tuck one foot up under their butt, and grab their shoulder and sit them up and over it. Today, I was playing around with Ella's feet working on crawling oriented skills. I had pushed her foot up near her butt, intending to put both there and shift her onto her knees. At that point she walked her self up with her hands and got into the sitting position without any help other than my placement of her foot.
Side note for humor: Amidst my research on delays, autism, etc, I found a self-test for Asperger's Syndrome (one of the autism spectrum disorders that is closest to full classic autism). An "average" person scores 16, mathematically inclined folks tend to score a bit over 20, and people with autism tend to score over 32. I scored a 25. I guess that means I'm nerdy, but just an ordinary nerd :)
http://www.okcupid.com/tests/take?testid=1982215450153908026
Anyway, g'nite all.
Our daughter Ella is currently 1 year old, and has some developmental delays. A lot of this blog, for the time being, is going to be involved in communicating her progress to friends and family.
She's been evaluated by the local early intervention program sponsored by the school system. The evaluation shoes she has some developmental delays, most significantly in gross motor development (ie: skills involving large movements of the body like crawling, walking, etc). She also has a less substantial delay in communication skills (the ELAP test winds up placing the delays in multiple categories, however the cause of all of them would appear to be communication. See mental mother for more details on this)
Her fine motor development is fine and tested as age appropriate. For her age she has a good "pincer grasp" and hand-eye coordination, etc. Ella also tested fine in cognitive development and problem solving skills. Also, baring being tired, she is quite sociable and enjoys playing with people. There is occasional stranger anxiety, but she generally plays with "strangers" if we're nearby and are calm.
Although not definite, as only time will tell, based on the above Ella's delays are probably not the result of any major disorders. (ie: she's got good cognition and problem solving, so she's probably not mentally retarded, add in her sociable nature and she's not likely on any severe part of the autistic spectrum. Her fine motor development suggests there's no broad palsy or cerebellum issues.)
Thus far she has been responding very well to her current therapy sessions for gross motor development. We've met with a with a physical therapist 3 times, including her assessment visit, but even at the initial assessment the PT left us with some suggested activities to work on.
In general, Ella has good strength development, and to quote the PT "many good building blocks" for gross motor skills, but several other basic skills are missing.
Prior to starting, some of the building blocks Ella already had are: Standing while holding onto things, rolling onto her side to grab toys (but never a full roll, nor a roll off of the stomach), and grabbing onto your hands and using them to pull herself up to sitting.
Right at the start of her eval, but before we'd worked with the PT, she also learned to:
- extend the pulling up on your hands to pull herself up, stiff-legged, into a standing position.
- while sitting, if you put your hands on her shoulder blades and braced her from flipping over backwards she could push herself up to standing with leg power alone. However, even faced with something to grab onto, she'd leave her hands at her sides.
(Neither of those is a useful skill alone, but if you combine them...)
Thus far we have been working on the following things with the PT:
1) Rolling. Ella originally rolled both ways on-time, but stopped shortly after she started. Very quickly she regained the ability to roll if you simply moved one hand into the right place (in front of her, and slightly off-center towards the opposite side.) Recently she started doing this without our help.
2) Deeply bending over to reach toys. We've been teaching Ella how to pull one foot in so she's sitting in a "figure 4" so she can bend deeply to extend her reach from sitting.
3) Tolerating "tummy time" - Ella has always hated being on her stomach. We're now doing things to help her not immediately become upset if placed on her stomach. Little things like always putting her down on her stomach, even if we roll her over right away. This appears to be working well. Even though she still sometimes immediately objects to being on her stomach, she does now generally tolerate it, at least for a little while (ie: 1 minute), and sometimes for more extended periods (ie: 15-20 minutes).
4) Pulling up to standing from an elevated seat. If you sit "Indian style" on the floor and sit Ella on your knee with her feet on the floor, she can grab onto an object nearby and pull herself up to standing. We started off aiding her by bouncing her a bit, but she can now do this with no aid.
5) Kneeling. We're spending time getting her used to playing while kneeling, as this get her used to a position that is important in a lot of transition movements. She seems to do fine with this, although she does eventually tire of it.
6) "plopping" to sit - This is mostly an exercise in getting Ella to realize that not all forms of falling from standing are painful. I've been successful with this a few times, but most attempts result in her resisting by "stiff-boarding" her back or pulling herself back up to stand.
7) shifting from lying down to sitting. This is also one we're still working on. The idea is you tuck one foot up under their butt, and grab their shoulder and sit them up and over it. Today, I was playing around with Ella's feet working on crawling oriented skills. I had pushed her foot up near her butt, intending to put both there and shift her onto her knees. At that point she walked her self up with her hands and got into the sitting position without any help other than my placement of her foot.
Side note for humor: Amidst my research on delays, autism, etc, I found a self-test for Asperger's Syndrome (one of the autism spectrum disorders that is closest to full classic autism). An "average" person scores 16, mathematically inclined folks tend to score a bit over 20, and people with autism tend to score over 32. I scored a 25. I guess that means I'm nerdy, but just an ordinary nerd :)
http://www.okcupid.com/tests/take?testid=1982215450153908026
Anyway, g'nite all.
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