Tuesday, August 08, 2006
Yes-a-do!
Wow!...in the past couple of days, Doug has, out of the blue, said several five or six word sentences that were perfectly formed and clearly spoken! This from a child who has spent his eight years of life communicating with single words or short phrases of two or three words. We thought we would NEVER get him to use VERBS. He used to communicate soley with nouns and charades. I really thought that we might be doing him a disservice not teaching him sign language (ASL) and letting him rely on that method to communicate--as he is VERY VISUAL and made up his own sign language, anyway. His signs were very effective and he used them consistantly. Grant, insisted, though, on making him SAY what he wanted instead acknowledging his made up signs (which all the immediate family clearly understood). (People who didn't interact with him regularly didn't understand his signs...but, he was really good at TRAINING people to understand them!)
The last couple of days, I have seen him really round a corner. Yesterday morning, out of the blue, he popped out with, "You may have my bowl, Rayna." Clearly spoken! I about fell over. When I exclaimed, "That was a terrific sentence, Doug!" he beamed with pride and then tried repeating it five or six times in a row. The more he tried repeating his sentence, though, the more garbled it became. Words were dropped and the pronunciation of the words he did keep in the sentence deteriorated. He seemed unable to repeat the sentence even once. It had popped out perfectly clear when he was relaxed and not THINKING about it...but, the moment he focused on trying to say it again, he lost it. Then, this morning, he popped out another perfectly pronounced six word sentence: "Yes, we DO have eggs, Mommy!". He had asked for eggs for breakfast and I didn't want to fix them...so, I had said, we didn't have any eggs. (I had honestly forgotten that Grant had bought eggs yesterday.) Doug had NOT forgotten, and he wasn't about to let me off that easily! So, I had HIM make the eggs...much to his delight! We made LOTS so that tomorrow morning when he wants eggs, I can just microwave left-over scrambled eggs!
After breakfast, he asked, "What's that noise, Mommy?" I am so used to him garbling the pronunciation of his words (horribly garbling them) and so used to him communicating soley with short, incomplete phrases that it just stuns me each time he comes out with one of these sentences that are just as clearly spoken as the girls, themselves, would speak them.
Funny how we all rub off on each other... Doug has a couple of phrases that are so uniquely HIM.... "Yuh-huh!" (for "yes") and "Yes-a-do" (for "Yes you do"...a very useful come-back to be used any time Mom tells him we DON'T have something or CAN'T do something.) I catch myself THINKING "Yes-a-do", sometimes! ¶ 8/08/2006 08:20:00 AM
Wow!...in the past couple of days, Doug has, out of the blue, said several five or six word sentences that were perfectly formed and clearly spoken! This from a child who has spent his eight years of life communicating with single words or short phrases of two or three words. We thought we would NEVER get him to use VERBS. He used to communicate soley with nouns and charades. I really thought that we might be doing him a disservice not teaching him sign language (ASL) and letting him rely on that method to communicate--as he is VERY VISUAL and made up his own sign language, anyway. His signs were very effective and he used them consistantly. Grant, insisted, though, on making him SAY what he wanted instead acknowledging his made up signs (which all the immediate family clearly understood). (People who didn't interact with him regularly didn't understand his signs...but, he was really good at TRAINING people to understand them!)The last couple of days, I have seen him really round a corner. Yesterday morning, out of the blue, he popped out with, "You may have my bowl, Rayna." Clearly spoken! I about fell over. When I exclaimed, "That was a terrific sentence, Doug!" he beamed with pride and then tried repeating it five or six times in a row. The more he tried repeating his sentence, though, the more garbled it became. Words were dropped and the pronunciation of the words he did keep in the sentence deteriorated. He seemed unable to repeat the sentence even once. It had popped out perfectly clear when he was relaxed and not THINKING about it...but, the moment he focused on trying to say it again, he lost it. Then, this morning, he popped out another perfectly pronounced six word sentence: "Yes, we DO have eggs, Mommy!". He had asked for eggs for breakfast and I didn't want to fix them...so, I had said, we didn't have any eggs. (I had honestly forgotten that Grant had bought eggs yesterday.) Doug had NOT forgotten, and he wasn't about to let me off that easily! So, I had HIM make the eggs...much to his delight! We made LOTS so that tomorrow morning when he wants eggs, I can just microwave left-over scrambled eggs!
After breakfast, he asked, "What's that noise, Mommy?" I am so used to him garbling the pronunciation of his words (horribly garbling them) and so used to him communicating soley with short, incomplete phrases that it just stuns me each time he comes out with one of these sentences that are just as clearly spoken as the girls, themselves, would speak them.
Funny how we all rub off on each other... Doug has a couple of phrases that are so uniquely HIM.... "Yuh-huh!" (for "yes") and "Yes-a-do" (for "Yes you do"...a very useful come-back to be used any time Mom tells him we DON'T have something or CAN'T do something.) I catch myself THINKING "Yes-a-do", sometimes! ¶ 8/08/2006 08:20:00 AM
