To Speak or Not to Speak

A few weeks ago, I wrote about Joe starting speech therapy.  In a nutshell: Joe wasn't making any noise at all; doctors and teachers kept commenting on how silent he was; John and I got nervous; John and I decided to start Joe in private speech therapy lessons.  For whatever reason, realizing that Joe needed some help was a big "AHA!" moment for us about our kids sometimes needing a little extra push.

So, it's been about six weeks since Joe started speech therapy classes.  And we have seen some seriously impressive results (videos below!).  Part of the reason we were so hesitant to put Joe in speech therapy originally is that I had always thought that there couldn't possibly be an effective way to speech-therapize a one and a half year old.  I mean, I can't get Joe to pay attention to anything for more than 15 seconds, and even though he does follow directions sometimes, how do you try to direct him how to talk?  What could they possibly do to that would teach him or explain to him how to make certain sounds?  Definitely couldn't have been more wrong about all that, though.   Turns out there are lots of things you can do to teach a toddler to talk. 

Here's what they do in Joe's speech therapy.  Phase I: narrating and labeling.  As far as Joe knows, he and his speech therapist (a super sweet, patient girl named Kristen) just play together for the whole half hour.  The whole time they're playing, though, Kristen narrates everything he does.  Everything.  She gives a constant play-by-play, so to speak, of everything Joe does with the toys ("Oh, you see the horsey!  Horsey runs to the barn.  Horsey plays in the barn.  You're done with horsey, bye bye horsey!").  Truly, it's enough to make you want to stab out your own eyeballs with a dull pencil -- I have so much respect for all you speech therapists who are able to keep that up all day.  Seriously.  But narrating is a big part of teaching him to talk because it gives him an opportunity to hear and label every single thing and every action he sees.  It's shocking how much this worked in getting him to just start attempting to talk and make some vocalizations.

Phase II: Breaking routines to encourage him to speak.  Sounds complicated, but actually simple.  The best example is "Ready, Set, GO!".  Kristen and Joe would play with, say, those car toys that spiral down a big roadway (the ones you let go of at the top), but before Kristen would let go of the car from the top so it could come down, she'd say "Ready, set" over and over, until Joe said the "GO!" part.  At first, all we were wanting from Joe was some kind of vocalization at all; any sound would have satisfied because the idea is to get him to understand that language can get you what you want.  The way I think about it, the idea was to teach him to communicate more than to teach him to speak.  (By the way, this concept is exactly why I am now officially a huge supporter of baby sign language.  Speech and communication are really two separate beasts that kids have to learn at the same time, unless you give them a head start by teaching them that they can get what they want with hand signals.  Huge apologies to all you baby-sign-language moms for thinking you were crazy and over-involved.)

Phase III: Hold out what he wants until he actually says the word.  This is the classic "You want your milk?  Say MILK.  MILK."  "On" and "off" are another good example; get out a toy that he really wants to turn on, but make him say "on" before you'll turn it on for him.  This one is a little more touchy because you definitely don't want to frustrate him -- frustration would go against the whole "language gets you want you want" thing.  But Joe has always been incredibly patient with Kristen on this one, and he's starting to get more patient with me, too.

So there's a quick and dirty breakdown of Joe's speech therapy sessions.

As for his six week progress report: totally. different.  kid.  He talks so much and makes so much noise that you wouldn't even recognize him.  When we went to our first speech therapy session, the only noise he'd ever make were whining noises and sometimes vowel sounds.  He never talked to himself, never babbled, and definitely never said any words.  I cannot stress enough how completely and utterly silent he was, and had been since he was about 4 months old.  But boy, what a huge change a few weeks can make.  He babbles to himself all day, says a bunch of words pretty clearly, and (the absolute best part for me and John) he actually tries to say words all the time.  I'll be walking through the grocery store narrating everything like a good speech therapy mom, and when I start talking about onions, he'll get very serious and look me right in the eye and say, clear as day and out of nowhere, "ONION!"  Then he gets all giggly and happy with himself.  It's so fun to see him excited and proud of himself when he tries to talk instead of frustrated and pissed at himself.  [Insert guilty feelings about not getting him started with a speech therapist earlier here.]

Anyway, great, fantastic, fabulous, unexpectedly huge progress in just six weeks.  But we still have a ways to go before we're on track -- according to the ENT who did Joe's hearing test, Joe should have at least 200 words in his speaking vocabulary by the time he's 2 (which is January 17), despite his speech delay, so we're sort of working on a time crunch here.  So far, Joe's pulling his weight like a champ.  I think I can venture a safe guess that we're at about 30 words, all of which have sprouted up in the last two or three weeks.  Definitely on track for our 200 word goal.

I can't resist putting up a couple videos to show you all the new words he can "say."  (Give him a break on pronunciation, we're trying to crunch a year's worth of talking into a month or so.)  Here's one from a few weeks ago when he started seriously babbling.  You may have to jack up your volume to hear.

Notice how he stopped as soon as he saw me watching him?  He's definitely super shy about the whole talking thing still.  He still won't make a peep at school, or in front of anyone he's not comfortable with.  Clearly, he doesn't even like getting caught by me! 

Here's a little later when he first started saying actual words.  He struggles with hard consonants, but you can clearly tell that he's got the right idea.

And finally, here are a couple of pretty clear words!  "Mine" (side note: don't ever teach a toddler this word.  ever.) and "bubbles."  You're going to have to give me a break on this one - I have a terrible cold and lost my voice a bit today, so I sound like a 75-year-old leather-faced, oxygen tank-using smoker who just got let out of the pen.

That's Ian in the background, by the way.  Don't think he'll have talking issues, since he's always got something to say.

So there you have it.  Moral of the story: there's no point in waiting to get your kid help with something they struggle with.  Sometimes all they need is a little push and the floodgates will open.  Joe, your dad and I are so ridiculously proud of you for achieving so much in such a short period of time.  We love you.