First Sign and Verbal Imitation!

We went to the Erie Zoo on Sunday to check out the new wild dog exhibit and had two wonderful language events occur. We ate lunch at Panera Bread and Nolan signed "more" to request more bread. His version of the sign is clapping, which is pretty cute.

Later that day he dropped a toy out of his stroller. I said, "uh-oh!" Nolan looked at me and said, "uh!" Now if we say uh-oh or up, he'll imitate and say, "uh!" Very exciting stuff in this house!

We had more speech therapy today and obtained a few more games to play with Nolan. One is sound vs. no sound. This one is very easy and we simply shake an object which makes sound and say, "I hear it" while pointing to our ear. If the object doesn't make any noise, then we say, "no sound." She also gave us some ideas for creating sound opportunities at home, like setting the timer when I'm in the kitchen. When it goes off, I can say, "I heard that! It's time to ...." and then fill in the blank with whatever I was going to do next. We can also have Dennis ring the doorbell when he comes home, and I can say, "I heard that! Who is at the door?"

We also learned some new signs today: uh-oh, again, off, and on. Our SLP is going to bring some sign books by tomorrow so we can look at ASL vs. SEE and start really considering communication choices. We're taking a lot from the auditory-verbal camp, but we're also using some sign language. It is so hard to know what choice is the "right" choice and which one will work the best for our child.

Our former SLP had never really delved into this, so we were flying by the seat of our pants and not really doing much of anything (I was taking some sign language lessons and we had the speech therapist, but there wasn't any real "method" or "plan").