Archive for the ‘Speech’ Category

Emily’s dancing video

Wednesday, August 23rd, 2006


This is one of Emily’s dance moves. She runs around in a circle singing at the top of her lungs.

Emily had her monthly speech therapy visit the other day and she’s doing well. Nothing much has changed since the last visit except her therapist now thinks sheis talking out of the side of her mouth a bit too much (it’s called lateral talking or something like that). She also talks too fast, blending her words together and often drops the last consonant sound from a word. This combination makes it very difficult to understand her. However, she can say certain words very clearly and pleasantanly surprised her therapist by using consonant combinations very well for some words (she can say the “tr” in “truck” very well, for example).

I explained that the words we use often with Emily (such as “truck” because she loves trucks) are the ones she says very clearly. Apparently this is actually a speech therapy technique called auditory bombardment. That is, saying a word and a sound over and over again even if the child doesn’t repeat it, in order to teach the child how to make that sound. We will continue to work with Emily to help her separate her words into syllables and get better pronunciation from some of the more difficult words (the ones where she needs to use her top lip).

I’ll also send an e-mail to the NYU speech therapist about her top lip, which seems like it has very little mobility even now (nearly two years after her lip surgery). It’s not tight like it first was, it’s just kind of, well, stationary when she talks.

By the way, Emily is doing great with potty training despite a setback due to a stomach bug (we were all traumatized by that one!) Her speech therapist was amazed that she was wearing underwear and asking to go on the potty all on her own. That’s my brilliant girl! (Isn’t it amazing how we attribute intelligence to being able to pee on a bowl?)

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Speech Therapy Guidelines for Emily

Tuesday, January 3rd, 2006

Emily’s speech therapist gave us a list of goals for Emily that I thought may be useful to parents who are dealing with similar speech issues in babies and toddlers who have a repaired cleft palate.

Goals for Post-op Cleft-Repaired Children

  1. Increase frequency and diversity of sound production
  2. Increase use of consonant-vowel production (“Dada”, Mama” etc.)
  3. Increase communicative opportunities

    4. – Arrange the environment so that the child needs to ask for what s/he wants
    – Create consistency in the household schedule so the child can predict what’s happening next and comment on it.
    – Take advantage of every opportunity to lavel, describe, etc. (bath time, cleaning up toys, etc.)

  4. Create play “temptations” (put toys in containers, offer novel toys)
  5. Imitate the child’s productions to encourage turn-taking
  6. “Balance” the communicative terms. Don’t talk or vocalize too much more than your child.
  7. Engage in face-to-face vocalizations/verbalizations as much as possible
  8. Encourage imitations of large and small motor movements. Use songs with gestures and large motor movements to accompany actions in play.
  9. Keep a running list of consonant sounds produced spontaneously.
  10. Model words with initial pressure consontants (/p/b/)
  11. Expand on your child’s productions. For instance, the child says, “Cat”. You say, “Cat. Yes, the cat jumped”. Use gestures to accompany your explanations and expansions.
  12. Increase your child’s awareness of airflow with vocalizations. Start with a whispered “Paaa” with lots of airflow (in a play context. Try having a puppet make this sound to call another puppet, etc.) You can blow bubbles using this sound or gently blow pieces of cotton balls across a table using the sound. Gradually introduce some voicing. Whisper the “Paaa” then add a voiced “aaa” (Paaa-aaa). This technique can be expanded on by your speech pathologist to eliminate glottal substitutions which reduce intelligibility of speech.

Emily is now 20 months old and her speech is improving every day. She still has glottal substitutions for certain consontant sounds (e.g., she substitutes the “g” for the “d” and also the “g” for the “n”), but she’s getting much better with her “d” sounds. She still says “Gaga” instead of “Ana.” I think I’m going to cry the day I hear her clearly say sister’s name!

Posted in Speech | 1 Comment »

18 month well baby checkup and speech update

Saturday, December 3rd, 2005


Here’s a picture of Emily enjoying her favorite morning snack, pretzels. She needs to be absolutely certain that the pretzel does not fall out of her mouth. I’m happy to say she has yet to bite her own fingers, but then again she only has about four and a half teeth.

Emily had her 18 month well-baby visit on Thursday (11/30). She actually turned 19 months on 11/15, but it’s difficult to get a well-baby appointment scheduled in less than a month (we procrastinated with getting her on the schedule). Emily weighs 23 lbs 11 oz. and is 32 1/4 inches tall. She’s leveled off to the 50th percentile for height and weight and we’re continually happy that she’s a thriving, healthy toddler who loves to eat. We had so many concerns about eating when I was pregnant with her, and we had some feeding diffulties in between her lip and palate repairs. You’d never know it now though! Her favorite foods include strained sweet potatoes, hot dogs, noodles, soy sausages, string cheese, kix cereal, pretzels and chicken nuggets.


She’s eating sweet potatoes and allowing me to indulge in a quick shot of her in pigtails which two seconds later became sweet-potato-tails.

Emily had a visit with her speech therapist who she hasn’t seen for about six weeks. She’s making a lot more sounds and words since the last visit. I have noticed some sound substitutions that I’ve been concerned with. For example, she replaces the “N” sound with “G” so “Ana” becomes “Aga.” We are going to work with her to help her learn to make the sound. The two excerises we’ll start with are having her say the “M” sound as much as possible which has no trouble with and also blowing. Apparently blowing is no longer a preferred method of speech therapy except when the child is using the “G” sound in place of other consonants, which Emily does quite frequently. She’ll say “Gaggy” instead of “Daddy” for example. She’s getting better and better at these difficult sounds though. Robin, her therapist, was impressed with how clear some of Emily’s words were including “shoes,” “eeieeio” and “thank you.” I’m going to read up on how we can further help Emily with her speech difficulties. She really tries hard to communicate, but it clearly seems to be difficult for her to get her mouth to behave the way it should with certain sounds.

Posted in Cleft Lip, Cleft Lip-Palate Feeding, Speech | 1 Comment »

Ear infection #4 (sigh), first words…

Monday, February 28th, 2005

The last two weeks have been hectic. Both Ana and Emily got sick with a bad cold. Emily’s cold turned into yet ANOTHER ear infection, right on the tail of the last one. This time it was a double infection and she was clearly miserable with a fever of 101.9 and pain in her ear. Ana had a sinus infection which didn’t slow her down (much) but she looked awful. Both girls are still on antibiotics, but Emily is done with hers tomorrow. She seems much better. At least, no fever, but she still bats at her ears a little and I’m worried the infection is hanging on. She’s still congested so that is probably keeping her ears somewhat full of fluid. She’ll get tubes during her palate surgery in April. Until then, we’ll just watch her closely.

This is Emily’s new friend, Lily. They sat next to each other at Chloe’s birthday lunch (Chloe is Emily’s cousin who just turned 5). They held hands for a while. I actually had to pry Emily’s hand off of Lily’s.


Lily decided she would feed Emily. Em didn’t mind.

Emily is now saying “mama” on a regular basis. This is nothing new, but she’s added a few more words to the list. She’s trying to say “dada” (she can’t make a hard “d” sound without a palate, but she’s compensating by curling her tongue up over her top lip and saying “lala”), she’s said “Ana” a couple of times and I think she may have tried to say “Amy” which sounded like “Ah-mah.” Course, I may just be reaching on that last one!

Posted in Speech, Uncategorized, ear infections | 2 Comments »

For My Friend Shelley

Thursday, December 9th, 2004

Dear Shelley,
Since I know you check my blog almost every day, I wanted to give you a shout out and say thanks for being such a great team coordinator.

Here’s a picture of me with my Aunt Amy who I love to snuggle with.

I know you’ll be proud to hear that I am now saying ma ma ma on a regular basis. I’m also making some other cute sounds that I’m probably not supposed to (baaaaaaa…daaaaa….) I miss you and can’t wait to visit NYU again so I can drool all over you.

Love,
Emily

Posted in Speech, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Speech Pathology Visit

Monday, July 5th, 2004

Prudence, Emily’s speech pathologist with Early Intervention, is very impressed with Emily and the NAM. She says all the typical problems associated with cleft lip and palate don’t seem to apply to Emily because of the NAM. She is eating well and is used to people touching her face. She’s going to call Shelley, the speech pathologist at NYU to see what she recommends.

Posted in Cleft Lip, Cleft Palate, Speech, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »