Speech: week 2

Monica noted that Dominick seemed more organized yesterday. He made good eye contact, especially when signing "more" when he wanted more toys, and sometimes he signed it without being prompted first. He also helped clean up each toy when Monica asked him to. She said these improvements could have been because he knew her better this time, but she wonders if some of the OT might be starting to work. Again, Monica stressed that until the OT really gets going, progress in speech will be slow, so she recommended bombarding his sensory system with lots of messy play, swinging, bouncing, etc. Speechwise, we still need to try to get Dominick to start imitating sounds. So far, nothing.

I do think there is some progress being made with the sensory integration. The biggest change is in swinging. Dom has gone from hating it and fighting getting in the swing to swinging for 50 minutes nonstop today. He wanted to keep going, too. He also loves going down the slide on his new swingset. And I noticed that he's starting to play with his food more, which might not normally be a good thing (and admittedly, it's hard to think of it as a good thing when there's spaghetti all over the kitchen door). These are all signs of improvements, but Dom still hates having lotion put on--he cries when he sees the bottle--or his teeth brushed. I'm really curious to see how the brushing protocol affects these issues.

When Monica was here, I asked her if she thinks that Dom won't talk or can't talk. He can make the sounds but doesn't use any actual words. For example, why is it that he can say "daddy," and he knows Mike is Daddy, yet Dom doesn't put the two together and refer to Mike by that name? Monica said her take is that Dominick can't as a result of all the sensory problems. She said it's rare for toddlers to refuse to talk.