Speech Update - Abby's progress & interview

It has now been almost 2.5 months since Abby started speech therapy. I know that we have seen some positive changes in her verbal communication - new sounds and a few new words are becoming more prevalent.  With as much as I have read & researched and also heard from other parents of children diagnosed with apraxia, I feel very blessed on many fronts… Abby has started speech therapy at an early age and there are very good chances that she will be mainstreamed early into kindergarten/school as well as a high chance that in the near future, many more people will be able to honestly understand all she says.  Additionally, as a military family our medical care takes care of her speech therapy 100% - I know there are so many families out there who just aren’t in this same situation and it is an enormous financial burden for them.  Finally, it just so happens that this year I am staying at home with the kids and I have so much more flexibility & time to bring Abby to speech therapy and to spend 1-on-1 time with her.  All of these things are what I am so grateful for. 

In terms of progress - although Abby can make numerous independent sounds, she continues to struggle to put the different sounds together to form full words.  For example the sound “pu” and then she can also make the sound “shhhhh” but has not been able to put them together to say the word ‘push’.  Instead it sounds like two distinct sounds… not necessarily a word.  With a few exceptions, Abby's word list still only consist of mainly consonant/vowel (CV).  We are hearing “Sentence-like” sentences where she strings together her words with “eh” [and] which is good.  There have been surprises though – she will say a word that has a distinct ending sound or she will repeat a full word/phrase that one of us say.  It always brings such a huge smile (and usually a wave of emotion) to me.  And of course, the praise is always poured on her and she always sits back smiling proudly over her not-so-little accomplishment. 

One of Abby’s tendencies when she feels like she can’t or doesn’t know how to say something is to respond with “NO”.  Even if she has said the word before, sometimes it takes a little coaxing to get it out of her.  What is really neat to see though is how much she loves to ramble on her play phone or when she is talking to Marilyn or Thomas.  She seems to seriously be having a conversation, but to anyone else – it can’t be understood.  It’s also uplifting to see her join in at the dinner table for our blessing.  She “recites” it along with us – emphasizing the words she can say and trailing back softly with the ones she can’t yet say.  But she always ends with a loud & confident “MEN!” (for “Amen”)!

She has started to refer to herself as “Bee” [obviously for A-bby].  This is a perfect example of her being able to say each of the two sounds of her name but not being able to put them together to say “Abby.”  Obviously we are still dealing with Abby's frequent frustration when she can't get her words out or point across to us… but things are slowly progressing.  They are progressing forward and that is what we want for her.

Video Clip - I figured I would "interview" Abby today to give you a small idea of what & how she says some of her colors (as well as some other names). I'm sure you will start to get the idea of where she is with her speech.