Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Paxton makes progress

Sometimes, the baby in the family doesn't get all the attention. Sometimes, he gets almost NO attention at all. At least, on here it seems like that.

The last three posts have pretty much centered around Phoenix and well, that's not fair. Lots of stuff has been happening around here that has nothing to do with that little man and his baby brother has been making  leaps and bounds in many different ways.

It's been two months, almost three, since Paxton started speech therapy at CSUS and he has finished his first semester.

HE DID PHENOMENAL.

In the few short weeks he was in clinic, he has improved so much. He has started imitating new words, more complex words; he's blossoming and losing the "attitude" he seemed to have. We don't have as many tantrums; I can rationalize with him much more effectively and he's more capable of expressing himself.

Instead of throwing things when the Xbox comes off, he says "I WHAN ECKBAAK!! I WHAN PAY GHAMES!!" which is vastly better, if you ask me. This kid can has an arm, and aim, and anything thrown by him is likely to do damage.

I swear, he's even learning to recognize letters and words now. He knows his name from Phoenix's when they are written out and when our Live was down and all our demos lost their thumbnails, he still knew which games he wanted to play and which he didn't. He is much more engaged then Phoenix was at this age and is even more engaged than he was just a few weeks ago.

I can almost imagine a switch was flipped in that little brain of his and now, suddenly, the world is brighter and easier to understand and navigate. He just seems happier. I can understand so much more of what he's saying; I can see the pattern and I'm more capable of helping him than ever before.

I should be getting his full report here pretty soon and recommendations for next semester, which doesn't start until February but what we found out in this clinic was there are a few phonological simplifying processes' behind Paxton's speech delay. What the hell does that mean?? you ask. 

"Children below the age of about 4;06 years may not have sufficient ability to fully co-ordinate the movement of their vocal apparatus. As a consequence, certain sounds, sound combinations or transitions from one sound to another may be currently too difficult. The child may, therefore, simplify the production of complex words. "

 Paxton has two of the three major simplification: deletion and cluster reduction. Deletion is as simple as it sounds; he deletes sounds off the end of his words. CAR become CAH; BALL becomes BAH. Even bigger words like "remote"; he can say 'wee-moe' but the "Tah" sound just falls the fuck off. Knowing this, I just bombard him with overly-enunciated ends sounds; cah-ARE, bah-ALL, duh-OGG, which is what his clinician recommended I do and this is what the clinic she wants him in next semester will do too.

The cluster reduction is a little more complicated but not really. When he tries to put more than a few words together in a sentence, a lot of the sounds go missing or whole words go missing. Phoenix still does this so I'm familiar with it and can usually fill in the gaps on my own. Repeating his words back the right way seems to be helping a bit; this kid just has a LOT he wants to say and he wants to say ALL of it right now.

This isn't just about his improvement in speech, though, oh no. He has been up to a bunch of stuff lately, including a much larger interest in the potty and brace yourselves for this one:

HE GAVE UP HIS SIPPY CUP.

I know. Alert the media.

Let me make it clear that his sippy was strictly at nap and bed time & that he's been using normal, non-sippy cups since he was 18 months old. That doesn't really make it better and I know most of you are also moms and you know as well as I do that we aren't suppose to give them SHIT to drink at night because it's bad for those pearly white baby teeths. That's not a typo, either I meant to to say teeths.

Since he let the sippy go, we've cut down DRAMATICALLY on diapers. I don't think he's peed in his sleep in TWO DAYS. This is awesome because it means I am that much closer to getting rid of diapers for good, which translates into 'money in the bank'. He's finally getting the hang of "feeling the urge" and has started to announce his need to pee for the whole house to hear. He's still struggling with getting his pants off by himself but that can't be too far behind, right?

Now, you put all this together with his THIRD birthday, coming up on the 30th and you'll probably see what I'm seeing, through tear-blurred, swollen eyes: a little boy.

Not a baby.

Not a toddler.

A little fucking boy.

He's done it so fast. He didn't even consider how I would feel about it. He just went ahead and grew up a little and left me without a baby.

Well, almost...

2 comments:

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    Rena

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    Replies
    1. Thanks for the follow, Rena! I think you are my first =D

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