Jake's Journey with Apraxia

In the spring of last year, I had started beginning to accept that Jake was going to need extra help in learning how to talk and therefore, stopped our sporadic coaching sessions from Babies Can’t Wait and sought out a private therapist. This was the true beginning of my quest for answers to the question mark I had about how my child was going to start  saying his first words.

I initially asked Jake’s SLP if she knew of any good DVDs that would help his speech improve.  She recommended The Wiggles.  Well, okay, but he’s been watching that since he was nine months old, and he still has that same silent smile plastered on his face every time he sees their happy faces dancing around singing “Big Red Car.” I couldn’t just sit around waiting for Anthony, Greg, Jeff, and Murray Wiggle to work their magic.

I am an Amazon shopper, so I instantly starting surfing through their speech DVD collection and reading product reviews. I decided on “Baby Babble – Speech Enhancing DVD for Babies and Toddlers” for the bargain price of $15.99. The age recommendation is 3 to 30 months, so I was a little hesitant to order it since Jake was 32 months at the time.  I was attracted to this product, however, because it was designed by SLPs and it got 4 1/2 stars out of 5.

This video is great and it was perfect fit for Jake. At the time, he was speaking maybe ten words and not saying any sounds or vowels on a consistent basis. I love this video because it changes scenes frequently, which is ideal for a toddler’s fast-paced mind, and each lesson is clear and concise with no distractions.

There are two SLPs and they take turns demonstrating basic sign language and also doing different mouth exercises. There are also segments of speech play, which shows colorful, stimulating toys in action, while the SLP speaks basic words like “in,” “up,” etc. in the background.

I can honestly say that this video was instrumental in Jake’s early speech development. For the first few weeks, I played the video about five times a week and then cut back to about two or three times because I didn’t want him to get tired of it and lose interest. I sat with him and also imitated the words and sounds that the SLP did and encouraged him to do it as well.

In about a month’s time, he was able to speak and sign almost all the words and sounds in this video. Because of his progression, I haven’t played this DVD in a couple of months, but this weekend, he found it and wanted to watch it. I was surprised and proud to see how well he can do this video now.

There are two additional DVDs in the Baby Babble series: “Baby Babble 2-First Words-P,B,&M” and  “Baby Babble 3-Next Words-T,D,&N.” Jake is getting more consistent with  b,m,d, and n now, but he’s still having trouble making the quiet sounds of p and t. We may be adding another one of these videos to our collection.