Re: Re: more words

[Guest guest]

He just has five words and he knows hundreds of words in his mind, but they

don't come out, so I guess oral motor. I am not sure, exactly. We have the

Pecs book and we are working on saying I want water, or I want ice cream, with

coaching he can get that out, not always clear, the words he has are up,

pizza, apple pie, yes,no. When he is working on the kaufman cards he can say

pretty clear approximations, but doesnt spontaneously use words. Jen

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[Guest guest]

Penny,

It is both....

When we learn to speak.... typically, we begin by single words like No, Mama,

Dada, Juice. If measured, at this time, our auditory processing would be

considered to be a digit span of one. That is how we humans measure it but

mother nature didn't do this when she designed us..... this is just us beings

develop and grow. We use our memory, both visual and auditory. We are able to

'hold' and 'retain' from our ears to our brain to our short term memory and then

to our long term memory a 'bit' of information. It is actually a long and windy

road from our ears to our long term memory. And then.... when we want to

speak.... we need to retrieve it! So, it must be stored in the proper place for

good retrieval! (We had problems with this and had to switch Mark's ear

dominance to correct this when he was older). To speak, you have to reach up

into that memory and feed the information back down and then tell your lips to

move, your tongue to move and your airflow to push through in order to form

words! No wonder why dogs just bark, eh? It's pretty complex!

So.... we hold information in bits. When we are just new to this world, we

don't hold much but as we are exposed to sounds and information, our ears hear

and begin to store the information that is heard.... we then begin to coo and to

babble. As we get older, as I said previously, we use single word

utterances.... our auditory memory has progressed to the point where it can hold

and store small bits of information. As we mature and work this neurological

connection between the brain and our ears, it gets stronger and we can hold more

bits.... we progress to a digit span of two. Want juice. Bad dog. Good mommy.

NO Daddy. Mommy mean! (oops!) aaaah.... now we are headed for the terrible

3's! We get to a digit span of 3 and can now say some multi-syllabic words and

we now definately have concrete opinions of our likes dislikes and are not

afraid to express them! At NACD, they call this the 'knock-em' block'em 3's'

because this is the time where most kids resist therapy! They dig in there

heals and adamently refuse.... but the child is no longer speaking in just

couplets but is beginning to use small phrases.

Note.... please remember that when you have a child who is speaking in single

words or in couplets..... please do the same back to him so that he can

'understand' you! When we talk in too lengthy of sentences, our kids give up on

us. It is too much for them. So, if your child is talking to you in single

words, speak back to him in couplets. If he is speaking to you in couplets,

speak back to him in 3 word phrases. Do what he does but add one. That will

ensure his comprehension and then 'stretch' his ability a little.

Phrases continue through the digit spans of 3 to 4, to 5 and beginning around 5

or 6, we now have sentences. We can hold more pieces of information in our

memory and thus have an ability to acurately plan what we want to say, hold it

in our auditory memory, and then spit it out. When we get to 7s and 8s, we now

begin to tell stories and jokes! (hopefully good ones) I will always remember

the day when we got to higher levels of digit spans and I realized that Mark was

funny! It was so cool! All of those years and I never knew that lurking inside

my kid was this dry, witty sense of humour..... it is very neat to see when it

happens!

But we worked for every cent of it! and we worked darn hard!

When you get to a digit span of 8..... you will have the ability to go to

college. I have a digit span of 8 and my Mark.... well, he now has a digit span

of 9! So.... his auditory memory is now better then mine! Ideally, I would

like to get him up to a ten but have been lazy with this. When you get to the

level of a 12.... you are considered a genius! Because I know that it is doable

with practice and work, I believe that even the most severely compromised of

individuals could conceivably achieve this. We have come so far but then we

started off at a level of 5..... so in essence, Mark was using phrases like a 5

year old. Of course, he was 11 at the time so you can imagine that he was

pretty noticeably 'different'. Not any more!

So.... what the heck happened to our kids to so compromise their auditory

channels to such a degree? Well, I am of the opinion that it really doesn't

take much. An infection that lasts for a couple of months at a critical stage

of development would be enough to turn off that neurological link of growth

between the brain and the ears. For us, food intolerances, namely in the form

of milk were key because they congested Mark's auditory channels and his

hearing. Once that growth stops..... it stays stopped.... but the brain is a

wonderful place and what is once turned off, can be turned on again! You must

dedicate yourself to stimulating that channel and then the switch begins to flip

and the area in the brain lights up again, the neuron begins to grow and

strengthen with use. To do this, we specifically need to attack and stimulate

that auditory memory. Think of it as a muscle that has atrophed with non-use.

The muscle is still there but it is wasted. If we continuously work it and give

it good nutrition, the muscle will come out of atrophy and begin to build once

more. It is the same with the brain. But you must localize the neuron to be

worked and developed. That is what many people fail to do when working with

their kids; they are so focused on output that they don't realize that what the

brain really needs to get 'growing' again is localized stimulation to the

correct pathway. Once you target the correct pathway, it will begin to

strengthen and to grow and eventually, function completely normally. That is

'exactly' what we did with Mark..... we grew his auditory neuron! Again, the

brain is a beautifiul thing!

But that is not all here.... some of the kids have blockages in their

methylation pathways. I have read story after story of Moms doing B12 shots

with their non-verbal kids and the kids begin to rapidly develop language. It's

not perfect but it is speech! And if you can start with some speech then

working the auditory channels further is much easier. I had a mom from my

hometown call me looking for a doctor locally who would do Glutathione IV's for

her boy on a regular basis. She had taken her completely non-verbal boy to the

States, (I am in Canada), gave him an IV glutathione treatment and within 15

minutes, the child started to speak! I could hear her boy in the background as

she wept to me, desparate to find a local doctor.... the child was as clear as

day! I couldn't believe it! So..... sometimes our kids have blockages in their

methylation systems that need to be addressed to push this cycle a little harder

and work the body to get it to function better. If you're not methylating

properly, the body is not functioning where it should be and it doesn't do what

it's supposed to. Areas of the brain shut down and shut off. Sometimes a

little outside nutritional stimulation will clear the blocked passageways and

get things moving to where they're supposed to.

Those of us with verbal children always need to ask our kids to help us

remember.... when we go to the grocery store, have your child 'remember' his own

small list of items... remember your homework.... what is it that we need to

" remember " to do today? Help me 'remember' this phone number. There are

countless of opportunities for us parents to work our kids' memories each day

during the normal course of living. We must ourselves 'remember' to ask of

them.... to push those beautiful auditory memories forward into excellence.

Note: what I speak above is not about 'speech' but about 'language'. Many of

our kids (mine did) have both issues.... Actually.... Mark had many issues that

we needed to address for those silly ears. We had to get him 'decongested'

physically, that meant.... NO CASIEN or any other food item like high fructose

corn syrup (a real nasty) that his fragile system couldn't tolerate. We had to

get his tonal processing up to par (which it wasn't) and thus used The Listening

Program by Advanced Brain Technologies to stimulate that. We got his Audtory

sequential processing up (short term memory) via digit spans and following

directions, we 'plugged' his ear and switched his dominance (only done with

older kids) and then..... TA DA!!! We had normal language! So... we still had

a speech problem.... but think of a child who has a lisp. He has a speech

problem but generally speaks normally otherwise. That was what we had after

doing all of the auditory work.... a kid with poor articulation but normal

language. None of the other kids even noticed! It really goes to show you how

important working the auditory short term memory is to the development of

language.

So... then we had to clear up his speech which was uncoordinated and slushy. We

did that with oral motor exercises and when that language was good, the oral

motor was easy!

EARS, EARS, EARS!!!

If you have a child who is not speaking correctly with regards to sound

production and articulation... this is a speech or SLP issue. If you have a

child who cannot speak or cannot form sentences or phrases at an age appropriate

level.... then you've got to look at the EARS!!! It is something that we

neglect to do and this is so darn important that I just want to SCREAM it from

the rooftops!

Take care my friends....

Janice

Mother of Mark, 13

[sPAM]Re: [ ] more words

>

>

> Can anyone tell me how this works? I know it is different with

each child,

> but is speech gained usually slowly and steadily once the pathway

is opened for

> speech? Or is it an all of the sudden thing where kids just start

talking

> sentences. My son is five and probably has five words he uses. He

understands

> what you say to him, it is just so hard for him to get it out.

Will it always

> be like this or will he eventually get it. I know kids can start

talking at

> anytime and there is no guide line or no window of opportunity

that closes but

> I was just wondering? Jen

> **************Make your life easier with all your friends, email,

and

> favorite sites in one place. Try it now.

> (http://www.aol.com/?optin=new-

dp & icid=aolcom40vanity & ncid=emlcntaolcom00000010)

>

>