The fall air is crisp and feels nice. This is my favorite time of year. We were able to go to the pumpkin patch this year! Anna loved pulling the wagon and picking out her pumpkin. She went on a pony ride, a corn maze, and went jumping on the huge pillow top. After being locked down for so long due to COVID, it was nice to be able to get out again. In fact, slowly, but surely, we are getting back to our regular activities. Anna is back to doing occupational therapy and she’s back in swim. She has her talk tools online as well. We are progressing nicely and have incorporated more tongue exercises for her. We are working on isolated tongue movement without her moving her jaw. Also, working on letters T, D, N, and L. We use Myospot, a small round dot that we place right on the back of her two front teeth. That helps her to feel “the spot” where her tongue needs to be able to say these letters and words with these letters. I always remind her to “put tip to spot”. Practice, practice, practice, and repetition, repetition, repetition seems to be the key. A leading Down Syndrome expert did mention to not just let articulation errors go, but to keep being intentional about it and having your child repeat, so I wanted to pass this along as well. I do notice her articulation gets worse, of course, when she’s tired or when she speeds up, but if I notice a particular word or sentence is hard to understand, I have her repeat it while encouraging her to “speak clearly”. She will then make an effort to deliberately speak, and her articulation will improve with each successive repetition. It is very interesting and I’m grateful for her willingness to do that.
On a separate note, we still have not decided on a costume for Halloween, yet, as she seems to change what she wants to be each day. We shall see, more to come.