Our "F" Words!
(Flower, For, Fish, Find, Fix, and SO many more!)
Speech Stuff!

  Due to James' hearing loss he had missed out on some critical speech development time! When the loss was detected his vocabulary wasn't a concern, but atriculation was! His vocabulary consisted of many words, however if you weren't familiar with him you didn't understand. Many times even those close to him had to work to understand what he wanted to get acrossed to them! This was becoming frusterating for both him & everyone else. We're actually lucky that he didn't give up on speaking!

  After James' hearing aid fitting we turned our attentions to Speech therapy. It took a Month for us to get an appointment with the Speech Department at the children's hospital where we go for audiology services. So finally, in July we had our first evaluation. Unfortunately, I wasn't happy with the evaluation procedure. It seemed cold and ridgid. James didn't seem to warm up to the therapist either. Keeping an open mind we retuned the next week for the evaluation results. I was not enthusted! In addition to the negative tone of the report, there was to be little or no parental involvement in the program she had planned. As a mom planning to homeschool this didn't sit well!  LOL Driving almost an hour to the hospital three times a week for thirty minute sessions to sit in the back of a room and "watch if" I wanted to was NOT what I had in mind!

  I immediatly turned to our audioligist! I remembered that she had mentioned another homeschooling family that she worked with. They had a therapst that came to thier home to work along with them! This wonderful mother had left her phone number available to help other families! I called and got that name of the therapist. In mid-August  1996 (after a couple of weeks of playing amswering machine tag! LOL) she came to talk with James! We were infinately more happy with her! She recommended home visits by her bi-weekly, and set us up on a home-based speech therapy program! Ironically, this route was approved by our health insurance, & the hospitals plan was rejected!

  We worked very hard over that first year! James did wonderfully too! Gradually my role of translator was not as needed! We worked on many of the sounds that James couldn't hear before, & consequently didn't produce in his speech! Some sounds seem to appear on their own once he was able to hear them. One example is /h/. One day he Just said House instead of ouse. I whipped my head around in delighted surprize! This was a fairly common occurance as he made progress!

  Of all of the sounds that he worked so hard on I think that I will always remember F the most! We  worked tirelessly on this! The first time that he used it attached it to the front of words we called Daddy at work, his grandmothers, aunts, and everyone we could think of, so that he could "show off". He was very proud of himself, and the rest of us were VERY proud of him! He now uses his /F/ all of the time! Sometimes when he says an "F" word I smile to myself remembering that once he couldn't! :)

 

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