Jun

25

Second Week of Clinic

Filed Under News 

Well, two weeks down, four more to go. I’m not really counting. I’m enjoying therapy.

This week I felt more comfortable, but my poor client didn’t. On Monday I went to get him from the waiting area. He was having a good time playing with his siblings. But as soon as he heard my voice and his mom said it was time for him to go, he started crying. He sobbed all the way up to our room and then the first few minutes of therapy. On Wednesday he cried again. He didn’t cry as loud this time, but he cried a little longer. Both days he eventually calmed down.

On Monday we played Memory. I was trying to decide if I would let him win, but in the end it didn’t matter. He probably would have won even if I was trying my best. Nothing like having a four-year-old put you to shame.

Let me try to explain a little bit of what I do the first hour of therapy. My client substitutes “d” for the first sound of almost all his words. So, “book,” “shelf,” and “rat” would sound like “dook,” delf,” and “dat.” Well, not quite. He also drops most of his final sounds so those words would actually sound like “doo,” “de,” and “da.” You get the picture on how confusing it could be to understand him?

One of my goals for this summer is to get my client to correctly use “m,” “g,” and “j” instead of using “d.” These were just a few of the many choices of sounds I could have picked. I’m using a Multiple Oppositions approach. I have five sets of picture cards that all rhyme. For example, one set is “dough,” “mow,” “go,” and “Joe.” Since I don’t want him to use “d,” I use that sound to contrast each sound. So I hold up the “d” card and another card and say what is on them. “Dough. Mow.” And then I have my client say them. Usually it comes out as “Dough. Dow.” I remind him of what sound it should start with and then usually he says, “Dough. Mdow.” Then I put the “m” card down and pick up another. “Dough. Go.” We go through the whole set of cards this way and then do the next set.

After this we take a break to “play.” This is where my creativity is supposed to come into play. We call this a “naturalistic activity.” I pick one sound to focus on and then come up with 10-15 words that start with that sound. As we do the activity my client has to say the words. This last week I had two naturalistic activities. The first one was matching farm things that went together (eggs go with the chicken). On each piece of paper was a word he had to say. For the second one we went grocery shopping in the therapy room. He had a little cart and I had a grocery list. He had to find the item on the grocery list and say the word on the item (that I had previously taped) before putting it into the cart. The point with these activities is to bombard him with lots of words using that sound and to hopefully get him to say it correctly. Sometimes it works better than others.

After our naturalistic activity we go back to our sets of cards, but this time we work on the final sounds. Because he drops most of the final sounds I am trying to get him to correctly use “k,” “z,” and “f.” After we’ve gone through each set twice then we have another naturalistic activity. By this point (hopefully) our first hour is up. The boy next door comes over for an hour of group therapy. I’ll write about this next time.

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