Parents 1st words work shop

Well Earl and I attended our class as the first step to getting Evan into a speech program.

I must say I wasn't overly excited about attending, but knew it was necessary to start the ball rolling. But I was actually truly impressed with the class and when I left I felt a huge ton of bricks lifted from my shoulders. The speech therapist that presented was knowledgeable, funny and interesting. I expected it to be dry and boring. But it turned out to be very informative and yes even a little fun. It cleared up some errors that Earl and I where making, including some calculation errors on the number of words in his vocab.

1. We have been all most quizzing him. Saying things like. "What is this?, come on what is this Evan." Apparently that's a no no! Its adding pressure and compounding anxiety.

2. The calculation of his actual words includes any word he has said whether he uses it regularly or pronounces it properly. I was under the assumption that a word that's counted should be a vocab word he uses all the time. Such as mom, which I hear almost a billion times a day now. Or that the when he says bue instead of blue that it doesn't count. But it does. So that gave him a huge vocab of over 60 words.

3. I also learned to put things in perspective. Like for example I never thought of speaking as a movement that required strengthening muscles. Have you? So he doesn't say certain sounds because the muscles arn't strong enough! Duh! I never thought of that. I was thinking why! Why can't he just say it! But he has to try more then 100 times to strengthen that muscle to make that sound! OMG what a revelation. So I learned it's all about patience and repetition.

4. Toddlers concentrate on one major task at a time. I noticed before Xmas that he wasn't talking but he was trying to figure out potty training. Now it's the opposite. Santa brought me almost 10 new words over the holidays, but we definitely went through more diapers. So the lesson is, they pick the battle and you have to notice the signs and just deal.

All in all with the new word calculation rules I have come to know that Evan isn't all that far behind. Not at all in fact. At the age of 2 he should have a vocab of 50-75 words, and one 2 word phrase. He says "up mom" once in a while. We also got a great hand out book with lots of tips! I'm planning on reading through it tonight to start implementing the info.

So I'm not a horrible mom! My son isn't miles behind! Everything is okay! Yippee!