Observing a Speech Therapy Appointment

This Post has been MONTHS in the making



Since becoming a Para-educator, the usual route of interview and hiring has proven most difficult, I decided to take a different approach.
The employment endeavor has become quite frustrating....to a point where I felt I would be old enough to retire before ever finding *any*thing! Volunteering was taking forever and everyone seems to have enough volunteers anyway.  (Besides, who wants to hire someone with a wheelchair and service dog?)

I found out about working with "G" by word of mouth through my mother. She happened to be taking with his mom at the tennis court and mentioned me wanting to work. "G" needed one on one time outside of school/speech therapy with someone and would I be interested.  Of Course!!!  

Something stretching me out of my comfort zone (as I had been praying for)

 I observed a session of his speech therapy at Community Medical Center.  I really tried hard to remain silent during this time. but caught myself saying an encouraging word here and there or making a comment to his therapist. (I hope I wasn't too disruptive).

My favorite part of the afternoon; His speech therapist pulled out her list of questions to ask while he had a picture in front of him.   His reply ...."Holy. holy smokes! There's a LOT of them!"  I chuckled....I couldn't help myself. But I encouraged him with an "I think you can do it".

Flashcards
V -sound 
WH- questions
CH-sound  (thinks we should work on SH- sound first)

This was interesting, working on the SH- sound.
He used a straw, placing his tongue underneath a straw while he said the word "shoe'. (this helped him with tongue placement. Children with downs syndrome have an enlarged tongue/ and often split palate so their speech is not always clear.

Also working on pronunciation of his 'S' sounds. (as in the word 'Cardinals'
I learned a new term today, called "lateralizing". That's what 'G' does.  When he speaks, often times the air comes out the sides of his mouth rather than the front.





So, academically speaking, the stuff he needed help in just didn't jive for me. Not so much the speech help either, but it is still something we strive to do, even though all we do now is respite, ..... We play his favorite game of all time :YAHTZEE!!!!   I have had to give him pointers. He goes for the same rolls all the time, and it affects his scores, so I tend to beat him a lot.   He IS improving!  He has beat me on occasion, but rarely.  I sometimes have a hard time remembering the rules, its  game I grew up on, but I AM getting older, lol! 
On occasion, he will bring a new game. One of our sessions together, he brought over his Sno Cone machine, and we made sno cones. YUM!   =D

The summer is almost over now, but one thing he enjoys doing is riding his bike. WE talked about going riding , but whether or not that will happen is a mystery to be solved. Life kind of became crazy for all of us.  Some of us having surgery, me falling and injuring my left leg (more than once)

I will share more as we go on   (HE loves to beat me at games, and BOY does he call me on it when I make a mistake or forget something, LOL! ) .