I'm so glad February is over. Bring on March. Bring on Spring. Poor Gabe had a bad cough at the beginning of the month. Then we all got the stomach bug. We are hopfully now all on the mend. His Gtube is bothering him a little lately. It looks good, but I changed it out and put a new tube in yesterday thinking maybe it was just positioning. He's still a little sensitive today. I think it may be getting a little tight and he may be ready for the bigger size now. Eating has not gone very well this month due to all the sickness, but luckily, Gabe's weight is still up. He is doing well with transitioning movements. He is able to go from sitting to rolling, to sitting, to crawling position, to sitting, to pulling up on his knees to sitting and throw some splits and flexed hips in there as well. He's frogging around in his walker. We finally babyproofed everything. I think I'm the only person who is greatful to finally be babyproofed. Still no active crawling, still no active walking, but he's getting closer. He's picked up alot of signs lately. Gabe can now sign: eat, drink, diaper, goodnight, book, more, help, mom, dad, up, play, bye. I went to the Central Kentucky Down Syndrome Association Conference in Lexington on Saturday. One of the ENT's at Cincinnati Children's spoke about sleep apnea. I am really thankful Gabe's apnea was caught early. It was very interesting talk. I also went to a talk that a ST did that gave me some good ideas. She had a bunch of free ipad apps to help with speech. She also suggested using the voice recording cards you can buy pretty cheap at Hallmark and taping pictures on them to help. For example, have a picture of daddy blowing out candles on his birthday and record daddy's voice saying "daddy. it's daddy's birthday. Daddy is blowing out candles on his cake. happy birthday daddy". She also emphasized word completion. For example, have a picture of a cat (can print these from clipart). When they say cat, give them a picture. If they say "ca", tear the cat in half and give them half of it since they didn't complete the word. Emphasize the end of the word and they can have the whole cat when they say the whole word. She also emphasized, when your child starts saying words like "ball", it's okay to get excited, but don't pick them up and hug them, and give them m&m's...give them a ball...they did ask for it afterall. Those were the take-home points. They also had a speaker talking about the grant KY passed to fund the Best Buddies program to help kids with DS go to college. It was very inspiring. It sounds like UK, and especially NKU are really paving the way for this in the state...go Norse!
Glad to hear all is well! Sounds like you got some great ideas from the ST! Just another suggestion...You could try taking some digital photos of things (around the house) that Gabe often sees/requests. You could laminate the photos and have Gabe make requests using these (along with sign language & verbalizations for a total communication approach). I've tried putting motivating items in sight but out of reach in order to encourage a request(using sign, pictures, verbalizations, etc.). You might want to start by pairing just a few pics together and eventually compiling all of them on a communication board or book. Just a thought. Hope you're all doing well! Gabe is just as cute as can be!!
ReplyDeleteAwesome news Michelle. Hope the Gtube doesn't bother him too much and that that can be resolved soon.
ReplyDeleteHere's some resource info I can share: There are several places in Ohio where you can borrow communication devices if you wanna move in that direction now. I'm pretty sure that the Rubinstein library has some 8 cell devices that you borrow (you can insert your own cards into the different cells and record corresponding words or phrases; when Gabe pushes on a particular cell's picture the device says the corresponding word/phrase). Also, there's an organization called OCALI in Ohio that you can borrow a variety of different resource items (including communication devices) through for free as well. (For all I know, the DSAGC probably has some too.) I know OCALI will mail them to you and you just mail them back. I think you get to borrow things for like a month, and then can renew if you want. Great way to try out different devices before investing a lot in one.
Cardstock, Velcro, and a laminator will likely become your best friends :) One thing that has historically been helpful for kids that I've worked with has been making them all look as consistent as you can; this allows the image and the word to be the only thing that stands out. (i.e., 4x4 white card, image centered on top, words centered on bottom, font bolded, size 36). If you don't wanna go out for a laminator, you can always just use that clear adhesive paper stuff that people line drawers/shelves/wrap school text books in. It will help protect the cards from strong little hands ;)
Glad to hear all is going well. That is a very good tip on not to pick up your child or do something like reward them when they say the word. So true, just do what they asked for.
ReplyDeleteWe are doing Brown Bear in ASL Daily. So funny when I opened this post and that is what I saw.