From things to action

The character of the speech therapist appointment became clear this week. Number One Son’s verbal communication skills, understanding and pronunciation were assessed. He did not perform as well as he sometimes does at home, but his problem areas were very clear. He is not very good with comparisons or negations and did always choose the alternative the speech therapist negated.

Number One Son communicates mostly with nouns. When the speech therapist tried to get him to say that a girl was cutting a cake, he just said “Cake” and pointed at it. When he was shown a baby crying he was repeating “baby, baby” enthusiastically. Thus, his grasp of verbs is poor and now we have to change the way we support his speech.

So far, it has all been about “red cars” and “black cats”. Now we have to emphasize action. It will be “cat running” or “boy playing football”. I have to start describing what he is doing – or what mummy or daddy are doing – so that it will all be related to his own life and physical action.

The unfortunate part with the appointment was that since it was in Coalville, I changed Number One Son’s nursery days. Naturally, it was pouring down and instead of having an active day at the Rothley station, we admired the iPlayer and the possibility of seeing ‘Sarah and Duck’ again and again and again and...