Tag: speech therapy
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Celebrating 2 Years of Telehealth Speech Therapy Being More Successful Than The In Person Sessions 🙂
Tony has always, always hated speech therapy. For many years this was his least favorite therapy type, as every speech therapist who has ever worked with him can attest. Our little man understands a great deal more than most people realize (in both English and Spanish), but he still usually doesn’t want to communicate unless…
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Needs To Stay
This is not a post designed for artistic eloquence, but rather one where I am speaking as a mother directly from my heart to the Arizona State Division of Developmental Disabilities, Governor Ducey, and all those responsible for funding disabilities services in this state. Whatever else we choose to leave behind from the emergency phase…
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Public Comments and Open Letter on Proposed Changes to the AAC Policy for Division of Developmental Disabilities Recipients
Earlier this week I submitted comments to the Division of Developmental Disabilities as part of a legally mandated public comment period for proposed changes to the policy that governs prior authorization for assistive speech device technology, or AAC. For a while now my posting schedule has been every Friday, however I felt like for those…
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What Comes Next? Cleaning For Sure…
Well, Hannah and I have just finished watching another episode of Father Brown. We both like mysteries, though I am pretty certain after the first three episodes that Lady Felicia must have PTSD hiding behind her upper-crust gentility with as many murders as she happens upon. And, no, that is not all I’ve been doing…
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Give It Some Time
This is a picture of Tony’s current AAC device that was taken right after he requested to watch one of his favorite Tinker Bell movies early Thursday afternoon. And as a picture, it communicates even less than our little man did in the asking. You don’t know how long it took him to make these…
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The Snail
During my elementary school years here in the great state of Arizona, there was a certain snail that made frequent appearances as the star of a seemingly endless string of word problems. His progress and his challenges were ever mutating, but the crux of the situation was that he was desperately trying to get out…
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Let’s Talk About Speech, Part 2
As we stroll through this second week of discussion about speech therapy for Tony, I want you to keep something very important in mind: Ms. B deserves just as much loving picture wise as every other therapist who works with Tony. This post however, is going to be lighter in pics than some of the…
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Let’s Talk About Speech, Part 1
I have discovered that when people with typically verbal family members think about speech therapy, most assume that it exclusively involves the process of teaching appropriate verbal speech. This certainly can be the case, but when an individual isn’t capable of producing vocal sounds or putting them together in ways recognizable to others, the approach…
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You Say “Hello,” He Says “I’ve Gotta Go!”
By November of 2016 we had reached the point where Tony was no longer vomiting if people got too close to him, but it was still extremely challenging to get him into most public places. There are a number of reasons for that, many related to the differences in his sensory systems, but our little…
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I Survived March 20th, March 21st, March…
Tony feeds off of the emotions of those around him, especially people he deeply loves. So if a member of the family of his heart is having a bad day or rough moment, he can rapidly careen out of his own emotional equilibrium. Sometimes these situations can cause deviations to the schedule he’s used to.…