Autism & Speech Therapy

      Exciting news outta our household this week.  It's no secret Anthony has speech therapy.  Up until about a year and a half ago he had almost no words in his vocab and dealt with this by having several meltdowns a day.  I can't say I blame him, imagine being five years old and not being able to express your wants, thoughts and feelings.  I started early around 18 months on early intervention with speech and sensory.  He is almost seven and still cannot say a complete sentence.  He repeats back the last word or two of what you say.  

This prompted his speech therapist and I to come up with something a little more creative to motivate his constantly working brain.  He has a fascination of letters and words so we came up with a way he can see the words and expand is vocab.  Therapist and teachers do this daily.  This is nothing new.  Only new to us in our daily activities.  By putting I want on one pec card and letting him pick another card of his choosing for a want, he in turn has learned how to say "I want pretzel."  His actual first motivator was his train card.  I know folks, should have known right?  He loves to read so much it took only three times showing him and he ran with it.

This is when I just about cried.  I didn't have my camera out.  Hearing him put three words together had me in tears.  Then he blew it outta the park with adding please!  How can I explain to you how emotional it is to hear my child put four words together?  I have been dreaming of this for years.  At one point we weren't sure if this would ever happen.  He has worked so hard to get to this point.   This past month he has just exploded with new accomplishments.  I am so delighted to share this with you.  I am striving to get a video up of him doing this on my youtube channel. 

I am pleased to share with you my new store is up and my patreon page is up.  I would love for you to stop by and take a look at both.  Share with me your experiences with speech therapy in your home.  Do you have any tricks that helped your kiddo?  Join me on this journey and please tell me how you liked this blog!