Small Steps

Nolan's receptive and expressive language is quite good. Not "good for a hard of hearing child," but simply good- for any child. He regularly puts together 3 and 4 word sentences, has far too many words to count, communicates his wants and needs (LOUDLY) and is able to follow 2 step directions.

We do have some concerns with his grammar and his verbal processing, though this may be due to age more than hearing status. Still, because he is at continual risk for language problems, I think we will definitely mention these problems in his IFSP goals this fall.

We have found a way to work with his ability to answer questions. Since Nolan will mimic the question rather than formulate an answer, our speech therapist has devised the following technique: Ask, Model, Ask (wait).

First, she asks the question, "Nolan, what is this?"

Nolan will invariably repeat, "Noh*, what is this?"

Then she'll model the answer by asking me the question:

"Mommy, what is this?"

"That is a frog!" I enthusiastically answer.

Then she asks Nolan again: "Nolan, what is this?"

He'll repeat, "Noh, what is this?"

Then comes the waiting. Instead of answering the question for him or accepting his repeated question, we simply look at him and wait. Finally, after much pause, comes the answer:

"Pwog!"

Then there is much clapping and cheering and running around in circles (Nolan's personal expression of "happy"). This process works about 25% of the time right now, so we're keeping it up and hopefully the success rate will increase with time.

His other "issue" is not uncommon for children his age. He gets his grammar backwards- instead of saying, "the bear has a ball," he'll say, "ball has a bear." Or he'll say, "Work at daddy" to mean "Daddy is at work." Right now I am simply repeating what he says, but in the correct order. If he says, "Asleep a Matt," I'll say, "Matt is asleep! Maybe he will wake up soon."

Otherwise, he continues to astound and amaze us with things we didn't know he could do. Our speech therapist told him to put a green circle on blue square, and he was a bit flummoxed. She backed the complexity of the request down a notch, and asked him to put the yellow triangle on the yellow circle. His little hand reached out and accomplished the task without hesitation. He managed to handle two shapes and one color in his auditory memory, and get them in the right order. WOW! Not bad for a kid who still hasn't turned two!

The "eating thing" is still plaguing us. His appetite varies greatly from day to day, so we never know if it will be a good eating day or a poor eating day. This morning he woke up and threw up until noon. He doesn't appear to be sick (slight temperature, but Nolan nearly always has a slight temperature). It is very similar to what he did in April, when he quit eating well. It is definitely something we will keep an eye on. He has his follow-up GI appointment on the 31st of August, and we will get our assignment to the feeding clinic at Buffalo Children's at that time. I've heard they can do wonders, so if there is no medical cause, we should be in good hands.

*Noh is what Nolan calls himself. Silly parents for giving him a name filled with low frequency sounds!