Jake's Journey with Apraxia

I’m still waiting patiently for the lazy days of summer, but this week at least slowed down a little. My middle son played in his final baseball all-star tournament last weekend and I survived twelve hours (9 a.m to 9 p.m.) at the park that day with Lil’ Man. This week, I’ve taken a bit of a break from my obsession with apraxia to get caught up on a few annoying, but necessary things like bills, paperwork, and filing.

 

Jake’s been doing  average in speech therapy lately and I haven’t had time to be an overachiever on the home front. So, no cute and effective speech games this week. Two nights Jake refused to do his flash cards, even starting to cry one time; I had to let it go.

I got out my Speaking of Apraxia book to find some quick speech activities, but got side-tracked and ended up making a speech and language star chart. I got poster board and charted out the days of the week. Each day Jake does a speech activity, he gets a star. I also included “Picking up Toys” and “ABCs & 1,2,3s” as possible star earners. Jake has really been trashing the house this summer and I need to give him some incentive to ditch this habit. I think I’m going to let 8 stars equal $1 and then let him go to the store to pick out a toy or special snack.

While I was making my chart, Jake tried to overdose on Flintstones Gummy Vitamins while in route to the bathroom. So much for those bottles being child-proofed. Thank goodness I got up to get the white-out in just enough time to catch him with ten shoved into his chipmunk cheeks. Once I swept his mouth and threw them in the trash, I kept asking him, “Did you eat any more? Did any more go down your throat?” Suddenly saying a sentence became very important, but all Jake could say was “Yes,” with a bewildered look on his face while holding up ten little fingers. Fortunately, I just got a new bottle a little over a week ago, so I was able to count them out and make sure we didn’t need to make a trip to the ER.

After all that work with the star chart, I didn’t even do anything educational with him.  Jake spent a lot of time this week on the iPad and playing with big brother. We also managed to go to the library and got a brand new stack of books.

Kindermusik has been a perfect supplementation to speech therapy this summer and Jake is loving it. Also, I have a major milestone to report! Last Thursday Lil’ Man said his first word aloud in class. (Usually he clams up in front of kids his own age). Ms. Dana held up a picture and asked if anyone knew what it was. Jake was the first to answer loud and clear, “Church!” His /ch/s were pronounced beautiful and perfect.

He also told Daddy to “Hurry up!” at bedtime one night and “Shhh!!” at the swimming pool when he was instructing him to do something he didn’t want to. Only the parent of a child with apraxia gets giddy at back-talk.