at the start, it felt like we were making no progress at all! it was difficult to get him to stay engaged long enough to implement any of the strategies and techniques recommended to us. outings with him were a little stressful because he was all over the place!
We soon discovered that Rowan had some sensory issues. He is a sensory seeker. In the simplest terms, he needs lots of sensory stimulation-physical activity, touch, etc-in order to center himself enough to process the world around him. This factored heavily into the speech issues. We needed to really work on getting him centered and able to focus before we could even work on the speech aspect. Three or four months were spent trying to figure out what sensory stuff worked and what didn't. slowly we started seeing improvements. he sought out storytime. bringing book after book over to have me read to him. he would sit and build with his legos, play with his trains, and "talk" to his stuffed animals.
those gains were amazing! but, we still weren't seeing any improvement in his speech. we got into the habit of saying things over and over and over. emphasizing simple words. "up" "down" "on" "off" "eat" "go" "cup" and so on. initially, i felt a bit silly. but, the more i did it the more of a habit it became. our ST is always encouraging and reassuring. she seemed happy with his progress. while not adding any new words, he was becoming more verbal and making more complex sounds.
it's been a sometimes frustrating and incredibly humbling journey. we are doing all we can but this speech thing will happen when it happens. there isn't anything else we can except to continue the things we've been doing.
last week i posted this picture to instagram with the caption "it's all good until he realizes the buses are not coming home with us"
