Breaking the Code...

...to Elise's language. When Suzanne came last Friday, she took a language sample from Elise (tried to write down every word Elise said and the phonological way that she said it)...a difficult task since she is talking so much lately...especially with Suzanne. I also told her some of the things that I noticed with Elise's language...all her little "rules." She seemed really shocked when I told her what I've noticed...it turns out that Elise is a very complicated little speaker...Suzanne said, "She is a research paper." She seems to be making errors that at least Suzanne has never heard of before. Here are the rules that I've noted from Elise:

• She takes the last consonant sound of a word and uses it at the beginning also.
  Examples:
  hold and fold= "dold"
  down= "nown"
  bed, head, etc. = "dead"
  dog, frog= "gog"
  side= "dide"
  She does this with a lot of words! You can see how this would become very confusing...any word that belongs to the same word family is pronounced exactly the same way. I usually can figure out what she's saying in context...but if it's out of context, it takes a while (if I ever figure it out).
  
  This is the part that Suzanne described as being a research paper:
• If a word ends in /k/, she starts it with /g/.
  Examples:
  milk, book= "guk"
  back = "gak"
• If a word ends in /t/, she starts it with /d/.
  Examples:
  cat= "dat"
  seat, feet= "deet"
  shirt, hurt, dessert= "durt"
• If a word ends in /p/, she usually starts it with /b/ or /d/.
  Examples:
  jump= "dump"
  pop= "bop"
  Suzanne gave me the speech therapy lingo to go along with what I had noticed...k and g, t and d, & b and p are each sounds paired together because they are made by using the same mouth placement...the only difference is that one is voiced and one is voiceless: k is voiceless, g is voiced; t is voiceless, d is voiced; p is voiceless, b is voiced. So, what Elise does in this instance is that if a word ends in one of these voiceless sounds, she starts the word with its voiced pair. Very intriguing...and confusing!!
  
• If a word begins with a vowel sound, she puts a consonant in front...following the same rules as above.
  Examples:
  out= "dout"
  Audrey= "Daudee"
  
• She often replaces /m/ with /n/ when used at the beginning of a word:
  Examples:
  move= "nood"
  Mommy is one of these three: "Mommy", "Nommy", or "Yommy"
  
• She often deletes one syllable of a two-syllable word:
  Examples:
  Daddy= "Da-ee"
  
• She usually deletes part of a blend.
  Examples:
  tree= "tee"
  
• Her consonants of choice seem to be /g/ and /d/...if she can't make a certain sound, she usually replaces it with one of these.
  

So, as you can see...communication becomes very frustrating for her (and for people in conversation with her)....especially since she understands 100% of what is said to her. She can follow commands (2 and 3-step) very well...except of course if she chooses to be a 2-year old and decides not to do it. We have thought for a long time that Elise may have Apraxia...a problem with motor planning...getting the message from her brain to her mouth to make the sounds that she wants to make. Though we still think that this is part of the problem... it is obvious that some sounds that she can make...she doesn't use in certain words...or in certain places in words. So, a new possibility is a phonological processing problem....she has not memorized the "rules" of how sounds fit together to make words, so she has made rules of her own...which means we need therapy to re-teach her how to combine sounds to make words. I talked briefly with the supervisor at LSU about these things that I've noticed...she emphasized that diagnoses in speech should not be made until after age 3 because some of the problems you see are solved with maturation. So, I am satisfied with that...I'm sure that she and I will talk again about this in the fall....Elise will be 3 in August. Suzanne and I feel that it is not immature to begin discussing some of these possibilities so that therapy can be geared to whatever diagnoses there might be as soon as possible. Suzanne brought me some research on these different disorders, and I see more and more that Elise's is mostly a rules-based issue. The research also says that children with these disorders often have difficulty with reading when they become school-aged. This was not a surprise...Dr Hollman already warned us of this. Living with two teachers will hopefully be an asset to her if this is the case.

Audrey:
Audrey's urine culture came back negative....and she hasn't had any more accidents like that again, so who knows??
Look out LPGA!!
Audrey just began her golf lessons with her dad this weekend...she is a natural!! It is literally unbelievable...though I guess I am a little biased. Papa gave her some real clubs that are just her size, and Martin was playing out in the yard with her yesterday while I was in the house. He came in and said, "You gotta come see this." It was one of the cutest things I've ever seen. She has the absolute best coach...not to mention that he is having a ball with it...I can see the pride in his face...it is so fun to watch both of them. He taught her how to lay her club down next to the ball to get her feet the right distance from the ball...then square up to it...and hit- She actually gets some air time! Martin says he wants to play with her a little each day to help her practice...I hope she continues to enjoy it because I know he's enjoying it. We laughed today because she had her second practice and her first golf injury...she hit herself in the foot with the club. :) Ok...so she doesn't hit it perfectly every time. She was so funny though...she sat down for a few minutes, then she said, "I'm tough..I'm done sitting, I'm ready to play again." What a girl!

Lydia:
Still doing well!! Eating well...sleeping well...tolerating therapy with mom for longer periods! Of course, she chose church this morning to have her weekly crying spell...again. ..though this time was much shorter...we didn't have to miss too much of the mass. Elise and Martin, on the other hand, did miss quite a bit. Audrey got the prize for best-behaved...which won her 2 donuts after church! :)