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Hello all! I am writing to tell you about our first session with our new speech therapist! The pictures have no correlation....I just like to post pictures :) Anyway, Gracie has had speech and occupational therapy from about 3 months of age until about 16 months. Then we took a little break to do some "normal life" stuff and move up to Chandler. Up until this point, her therapies centered around feeding, but we are now able to move on to help Gracie form all of her wonderful sounds and signs into words! This link gives a great explanation of speech and possible delays with regard to pediatric tracheostomies:
http://www.tracheostomy.com/faq/speech.htm
http://www.tracheostomy.com/faq/speech.htm
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We lucked out and found a "Speechie" who is an ASU professor and specializes in kiddos with trachs! Double cool :) She has a graduate student join her and they work together with Gracie in our home once a week. I liked them both very much- professional, organized and very focused on parent involvement. They did an evaluation today and seemed very excited with Gracie's abilities ie her tolerance of capping the trach, her expressive sounds, her signing and use a few words and her understanding of language.They even suggested that we may be able to get her speaking in two word sentences by her second birthday (March 3rd)!
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Gracie was thrilled to show off her toys, her sounds and her dance moves for our new friends. She also loved all of the therapy toys that they brought and was very sad to see them go...a special red ball, in particular :( After our session I was reminded how much energy it takes for both myself and Gracie to focus on therapy for an hour. That is a long time for a 22 month old! So I forgave her little "red ball melt down" because I was tired too! We watched some curious George and had some lunch and that seemed to help. She was just so excited to meet some new people that it is still taking a while to unwind. Translation- someone does not want to go down for her nap....poor mommy! ;) So we will keep you posted on G's progress and, hopefully, lots of new words!