Speech help for younger than 1 yr olds

[Debby]

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Curious what kind of things do your speech therapists do with your DS children under 1 yr old. I have only seen one once and it wasn't too helpful. Also my OT does mostly Gross motor stuff. We just now are trying out an open cup for Keeran. Did you all start with a straw and when. Did you have speech before 1 year? What kind of things did you do? I am considering going to a seminar myself on feeding issues related to speech held in Seattle this week. Anyone hear of it?
Debby

[meghans_mom]

Which seminar is it? There are 2 that I know of that are good. One would be by Libby Kumin, the other by Sarah Rosenfeld-Johnson (talktools) - or their associates...
Meghan started receiving speech around 10 months, but I should have pushed for earlier. (I later found out they *said* MM didn't need speech but the real reason was the lack of speech therapists...not very nice, hunh!)
anyways...in SLT we worked with cup drinking, straw drinking, chewing skills (using cheerios, crackers, later on forks, spoons), tongue exercises, self feeding, blowing bubbles, horns, imitating sounds and facial expressions in the mirror, etc - I was never really impressed by my SLT either...I don't think she did help much then we got a new therapist who was so fabulous!
A great thing you can do yourself for your son is to get a large (unbreakable) mirror and place it against a wall where your son can watch himself and you and he can play together making faces and sounds, etc...so he can see you and himself.
It looked horrible but for 2 years I had a big wall mirror attached to my fireplace - and Meghan loved it. She would spend so much time infront of there looking at herself dance, and kissing her image, etc...
anyways - again I ramble on...the seminar sounds like a good idea...I'd go for it if you can...good luck! laurie

[sunnie]

hi debby,
emma started at almost 2 months, with chew sticks, vibrating tools, language bombardment, and massaging the face. they also massaged the trunk and they do exercises involving the trunk to strengthen the muscles. its helped with tongue control and her yelling and being loud, it hasn't helped her with eating. (sensory issues). that the ot helps out with. Good luck.
SUNNIE

[meghans_mom]

Oh yes - reading Sunnie's post I was reminded of the NUK oral tools and the vibrating massagers too.

[Chris]

I had to fight to get speech for Sarah. I asked for it when she was a newborn and didn't get any until she was 20 months (through community mental health). I still haven't been successful in getting it through the school district.

I think a ST could do a lot of preventative therapy. I know Sarah still has low tone in and around her mouth as well as a very immature tongue. We have been working with an OT but improvement has been very slow.

Chris

[coopersmoma]

My child, Cooper, 6 months has been receiving ST since he was 3 months old. We love our therapist. We use the Nuk brush, massaging of the face and inside of his mouthm introducing new textures and tastes of food. She has lots of things she works with Cooper on. She comes out to our house once a week for now and in the next month or so it will go to twice a week. I have been very pleased with all of the therapy that Cooper has been getting. He is doing so well in all areas.

[shellk]

Debby,
Kourtney started speech OT and PT at 6 months of age and the things that we mainly worked on her with were sounds in general...BA, DA, MA, little things trying to get her to mimic us..at that point we also started working on her with signs..like more and all done and drink and eat now she didn't get these right away and by the time she was 11 months she know 9 signs...It was tough work but she finnally got it..Now she speaks but not always clear when she tries to talk fast it is mumbles..But they used to put gummy bears in gauze and get her to chew on it for building her muscles in her jaws...Her mouth is where her muscles are the weakest still at the age of 5..Even though with the screams she lets out you would not think it or trying to give her meds...She can really lock it up. LOL

I also forgot the toold that were used it wa so long ago..NUK brushes and vibrating toys as well were used ..

[Alice]

Debby,
Frankly I do not remember what exactly they did with Luke when he was under 1. They did play a lot, and do now when he is 4. They think that teaching and playing at the same time is very helpful. I agree with that.
Luke would say anything for his speech therapist when he is playing with her. He thinks that he comes there just to have fun with Miss Tracey and relaxing while he is playing with her and we can see the progress (he starts using words and signs she teaches him).
So, if you have a concern, ask them why they do that way and may be they have some other techniques to accomplish your child's needs.
Good luck,
Alice

[christie]

WOW for me that was 11 years ago YIKES where has my babv gone Chris started EI when he was 1 month old and at that tme went to the center 2 x a week and had speech, OT and PT from the get go. Since it was soo long ago, hard to remember exactly what they did but I do remember in the very beigninng they worked with his sucking of the bottle and then before he was a year worked on the oral stuff, massaging and such. Did it help haveing ST that young?? BEATS me but I am sure as heck sure it didn't hurt

CC

[steffipoo]

HI!!!! My girl Olivia is 6 years old and I am thinking back... Hmmm.. Well she didn't start receiving one on one speech services till she was 2 years old. BUT at 5 months old when she entered center-based therapy she received speech in a group or groups of 2's. They had the feeding specialist in at feeding time.ALTHOUGH they started Liv with a cutout cup and straws VERY young that skill took her till over 3 to get. BUT Olivia has FABULOUS speech.One thing we did with her baby food(liv wasn't on baby food for long) was we would gradually add texture to it by crumbling graham crackers into it. Graham crackers melt in your mouth so their is no fear of choking. First started crumbling them real fine and less and less as she got it. She was completely on table food by one. I am glad we started introducing food young cause she could gnaw a flipping steak with those gums which I am sure helped her speech.BUT basically what I have learned thru time is that even as a small infaNT I provided a running commentary of EVERYTHING. SIMPLE commentary but definately got tired of hearing myself talk.EVERY uttereance out of her mouth we repeated right after she said it every babble it encouraged her to talk more and we NEVER said NOP NOT LIKE THAT we just gave her a good model if she pronounced it wrong.EVERYTHING positive.Also doing bubbles... ohhh look at the bubble its going up up uop then we'd pop it and pronunciate the word P-O-P VERY dramatically. We made songs out of EVERYTHING she learned soo much thru singing silly songs to her while lets say we dressed her we'd have a song about dressing the sillier and funnier and dramtic the better kinda rosie o donnell like. Her bro helped too he loved to teach her new stuff and she responded well to him. He is 14 months older than her and has and has always had really amazing speech.If you learn sign say the word as you sign it. Lean a good morning song you can sing and sign to her lots of stuff.good luck

[alisonzmom]

Debby,

Alison is 13 months old and has not had any ST through EI. This is a very sore subject for me!!! At her last IFSP, the county denied even an eval saying she was age appropriate based on info from the OT and SpEd. We have the annual review coming up next week and thanks to info I picked from LauraSnowBird's brain I know this time that they cannot deny it! Her OT has done alot of work with us concerning feeding and we are currently working on getting Alison to use an open cup - it's going VERY slowly but I will say that I have the cleanest dining room floor I've had in a long, long time! - and to eat far less pureed foods. So far the food part is going really well, if we could just get her to pick up food by herself things would be great!

I would definitely go to the feeding seminar - it certainly won't hurt and you may very well learn a whole lot of valuable info. I wish we had more seminars in my area but it seems no one really likes to come to Buffalo!!!

Barb

[Danielle]

Debby,

I'd say focus on:

1) Oral motor - strengthen the entire mouth, lips, jaw, etc. to ready it for speech.
2) Sign language - to teach that you can meet your needs by communicating....and it's a great bridge to language
3) Tons of music, games, and reptition - from the alphabet song to rhymes, etc. You want to encourage Mimicking in any/every way possible (can't acquire speech if you can't mimick a sound, right?)

These things really helped Zane so hopefully they'll work for you, too.

[Debby]

TEXTTEXT
Wow! thanks to all of you for your input on this question. I am so thankful for unomaas!
Some great news is, I talked to my ped about my frustrations with his therapy since we began. She is going to refer him to a great program here in Oregon. I am just praying all works out for our insurance to pay for it without any trouble. I will let you know. Meantime I sent an email to the Case manager and told him I wanted more appointments and speech now. Haven't heard back yet, so we'll see. When it gets sort of difficult, I just bring my husband on board, he can negociate anything!!
Thanks again so much!
By the way as a new thread...how about food?! I was feeding baby food and when in a hurry could just shovel it in, now I am trying just table food and it isn't going too good. He is quite picky I am finding about that. Also I am trying to be very careful about what I feed Keeran. Trying to keep away from sugar and salt, stick with Fruits and veggies and whole grains. Any ideas on foods your kids have liked that are healthy? How do you feed it to them. Keeran does self feed, but it depends on what I am feeding him.
thanks again,
Debby