Charlie was re-tested yesterday during his speech therapy session, so I thought this was a good time to do an update on our little talker. We don't have the results yet, or know what those results will mean going forward, but I can tell you the difference between now and May was remarkable. In May he could say the names of few, if any, of the pictures they showed him. And if they said it and asked him to say it back - little success.
Yesterday? He was chattering away about what he saw in the pictures before Heather could even ask. A blue car! A kitty - meow! Balloons - war, two, we, wohr. What does that mean? It's my attempt to capture phonetically how Charlie counts, which is what he did any time he was shown a picture with more than one of something on it. He's obsessed with counting things lately! Anyway, the other change was how he willingly echoed back words she said - not perfectly, of course, but usually understandable.
So, we'll wait and see what the official results are, and what the recommendation is for how to go forward. The change since he had tubes put in (July) truly has been dramatic - he now speaks in sentences, but he still has some improvements to make. The main area is his "end sounds." Basically, Charlie can and does make sounds like "k" and "t" - but only at the beginning or the middle of the word (you should hear this kid say "turtle!") In other words, "rat" and "rack" sound the same coming out of Charlie's mouth.
And he has not been particularly cooperative lately when working with Heather, which I have to assume is fairly typical two-year-old behavior. Why would he want to sit there and try to say "ca-T" when he could be playing with his cars, no matter how much of a game Heather makes out of it or cheers when he says it right??? So, we'll see, and we'll keep you posted.
In the meantime, I thought I'd share some of our favorite Charlie-isms. Some of are a little old, but they show his progress!
"Gigi" - this was how Charlie used to pronounce his own name. Scott turned it into a game, pointing at him or at a picture of him and saying "is this Gigi or Charlie?" And wah-lah: now Charlie can say his name pretty clearly - more like "Cha-lee."
"Yay" - this is how Charlie says yes. It cracks me up. I think there must be something in our genes that causes our children to find alternate ways to answer affirmatively. Zach used to say "ok," and now Charlie basically cheers!
"I me toe" - we hear this one a lot, and I'm sure it would greatly confuse anyone who heard him say it. What is it? Ice cream cone! Any and all ice cream is "I me toe," and we regularly hear "I wan i me toe."
"I dohn no" - this one is probably obvious, but it's a favorite because Charlie says it 90% of the time you ask him a question, even if he does know the answer. What color is this car Charlie? "I dohn no. Reh."
ARP - this isn't a word, these are the letters Charlie repeats over and over again if he's looking at your shirt or something else with letters on it. He throws in the occasional O, but that's about it. Which cracks me up, because he knows what a C is - he'll happily tell you "C is for Cha-lee," but it's still those same letters, over and over.
"Wa-er tow-r" - we don't know why, but Charlie loves water towers. He points them out wherever we go.
"Bing-bo" - we play a game in the car where you yell bingo if you see a yellow car; this is Charlie's version. Often he mixes it up with our VW bug game, muttering something that sort of resembles "slug a bug no pass backs."
Charlie has reached the stage where he loves to sit down with his books and "read" them to himself. We read to him as often as we can, and since we've been instructed to "auditorily bombard" Charlie with the correct sounds, we are trying to focus on books that have the ever important T and K end sounds (those are the two sounds he should, at his age, definitely be able to say). Dr. Seuss to the rescue! Charlie now has books like Hop on Pop memorized, and we get a kick out of hearing him quote lines from the book when he's talking himself to sleep at night.
A lot of the other talking Charlie is doing is echoing Zach - the level of little brother/big brother imitation has gone off the charts in our house. But more on that later...
I love this ^ picture. The reason for the excited smile on his face?
His big brother, of course. Running at him full speed in some sort of game only they understand!
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