Ben put together his first two-word sentence tonight! He pointed to Neil's eye and said, "Dadda eye!" We were flabbergasted!
I think it was mostly accidental -- he was thinking about both "Dadda" and "eye," and they just came out together. But of course that's the way it usually goes with language and other developments. He does something by accident, we dive in there with the praise and adulation, and with repetition it becomes purposeful and meaningful.
On Thursday, we went to BHSC to get Ben's new ear mold (for his hearing aid), and while we were there the director of the oral-deaf program gave him a language assessment. (We had requested this. We were pretty sure that he was doing very well, but we wanted to make sure we weren't missing anything.) She was very impressed. He is either at or beyond all language milestones for his age, even for a typical hearing child.
Ushers ... a New Journey
4 years ago
7 comments:
Wow! Even if it was coincidental, that is great! We've been noticing that Nolan's "word count" has been increasing a little faster in December than in the previous months.
Does Ben have the /p/ sound? Nolan is totally lacking that one (the only consonants we have are m, n, b, and d.
Wow! That was very sophisticated for his age! *beams with cyber-auntie pride
*
Smart kid you got there!
(Ah, pardon my wandering asterisk there.)
Leah -- no /p/ at the beginning of syllables yet, but he's got it at the end. He says "aaappp" for apple and he's now doing a great version of "up". Does Nolan do a hard g? That's what Ben uses for k or hard c ("kitty" is "gedde"). Ben's friend Jackson, 10 days younger, can say "fish"! We're nowhere near that yet.
Carolyn -- beam back atcha! Give Hendrik a cyber-auntie hug for me.
Oh, yesterday he pointed to my knee and said "Mama knee"!
No hard /g/ yet. We also have no /k/ sound. I'm a little concerned because most of Nolan's words lack consonants (unless they have the aforementioned b, m, n, or d at the beginning of the word). We'll give it some time, though- he is young! At some point I want to get an aided audiogram (we've never gotten one). I want to make sure he's *hearing* the sounds he isn't saying.
Leah, I think that Ben's /p/ may have come from blowing raspberries, which he started doing very enthusiastically at about 5-6 months. It kind've gets his mouth into the right shape. When a /p/ sound accidentally came out, we jumped on it with praise. You could try that with Nolan -- it might be a way to get him to practice the sound, even if he can't hear it very well right now. BTW, how's the fluid/tube situation?
His tubes are in, fluid is gone, and he's back to the moderate range in his right ear! Big relief on this end.
We've been trying to emphasize the /p/ sound with words like "pop!" Still no luck, but it could be normal developmental variation rather than a hearing thing. Since Matthew was quite speech delayed, we're going to have a hard time knowing if any speech issues are related to hearing or if it is just our family history of speech delay!
I might try something that we did with Matt, which was to put a piece of cotton on the table and make it move by using the puffs of air from the /p/ sound. Hopefully it will come on its own soon!
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