#speech practice

“9f c9urse I kn9w what I’m d9ing. Even th9ugh they all d9n’t 6elieve me, that’s fine. I kn9w m9re a69ut them than they c9uld ever h9pe t9 kn9w. I kn9w may6e m9re than I sh9uld. They say the eyes are the wind9ws t9 the s9ul, and every time s9me9ne l99ks at me I realise s9mething new. There’s never a time where I d9n’t take in the nuances, the little things that make my friends my friends. Call me gentle all y9u’d like, 6ut kn9wledge never c9mes with9ut suffering. 

Suffering. 

It’s a strange little w9rd, sp9ken s9 li6erally in the Alternian and 6eforan dialects that it hardly seems t9 have a definiti9n. 6ut we here, we twelve, kn9w it deeper than it can ever 6e written in 699ks. It is carved into Mituna’s 6ones, int9 Cr9nus’ skin, int9 Rufi9h’s smile, int9 P9rrim’s every vindictive w9rd. These examples are just examples, and they d9 n9t undermine 9ur st9ry. 

We twelve are the f9ll9wers 9f the ap9calypse; the 6ringers 9f a new age wr9ught in grey and 9il-slick hues. We are wh9 we are, and n9 am9unt 9f empty sweeps may change us. Y9u may n9t change me, n9 matter h9w I waver in the currents 9f time. C9me f9r me with knives and with daggers and with sickles; I kn9w all t99 well the pain y9u wish t9 strike acr9ss my aged flesh. T9 exp9se the cherry fl9wing underneath w9uld 9nly 6e a f99l’s act. I kn9w all, and I will make all kn9wn in due time. 

NEXT GEN

“You guys shouldn’t have married,” Danielle said, clicking her tongue. “It’s too much.”

Valerie Gray Fenton rolled her eyes. “Pizza’s in the oven, emergency contacts are on the fridge. James has two bottles in the fridge full of chocolate milk if he gets thirsty. Ivy can have whatever as long as it’s not too sugary. You know how she is. Oh, and your nose ring,” Valerie pointed at it and her nose crinkled, as if smelling something foul. “Trust me, you might want to take that out. James likes to pull on jewelry now.”

As if to accentuate her point, Valerie’s child reached up from Danielle’s lap, grasping at nothing with tiny fingers. She grabbed his arms and pulled them down before blowing her bangs back with an annoyed breath. “Great. Anything else?”

“Um …” Valerie paused, tapping her index finger to her chin. “Bedtime by eight o’ clock, we’ll be back around nine.”

Daniel Gray Fenton poked his head from around the corner, where he’d been cutting up watermelon for Ivy to eat. “Play set is in the basement.”

“Play set,” Danielle deadpanned.

Danny shrugged, popped a piece of watermelon in his mouth, and said, “Baby shower gift from Vlad. Keeps Ivy from getting distracted and flying off.”

“It does not!” Ivy yelled from the kitchen table.

When I was visiting home, my dad took me to the library, where he was trying to read a book. He showed it to me, pointed at a sentence, and said a completely different sentence out loud. I told him that wasn't what the book said, and he agreed, saying "jumbled" 

I'd always thought that he could read better than he could understand spoken words, because he'll frequently ask people to write something down if he's not understanding it or if it's really important to him. But he told me he has trouble with reading "sometimes" and that long pages are more difficult than quick sentences, like a text message or email. 

So I want to try to incorporate reading into his therapy as well, not just looking at a picture and saying the word. And I think what could help a lot with this is some of the apps he has/ that I want him to download for his iPad. He has a few different apps that will show a picture with the word under it, and then you can press a button to hear the word spoken to you. 

I want him to download an app called Little Finder, which is a game based around that very concept. But he really did not seem interested in it. I meant to download it for him while I was at home and make him look at it, cause then at least I know he's doing it, but I forgot. 

I had also asked him to download an app called SeeTouchLearn that I got to see in action while I was home. And it's freaking awesome. It has different "lessons" in it where it will show a few images and ask you to find a specific thing out loud, and there's also written directions at the top. (ex: "Click on the dog" and you have to pick the right one out of three different animals) And then the prompts get harder within each lesson, while sticking to the same theme ( so if it's animals, the next prompts would be "Which one says woof?" and "Which one chases cats?", and if it was something like food would have prompts like "Which one is green?") which was AWESOME cause I could tell he was struggling with that so I could finally find something to work with him on. And you can even create your own lessons with pictures that it gives you, or you can import your own. 

And this would all be INCREDIBLE, except that you have to download different image packs, and there's so many of them but they cost like $4 each and I wouldn't even know where to start or which ones to download first. I want him to have a range of images to learn and figure out, so I wouldn't want to buy only animals and food because then he would probably just memorize those ones. And I don't think he'd actually pay for them, he's kind of stingy. 

I really wanted to look at that app more, maybe purchase some packs and make some lessons, but didn't have the time. Maybe something I can do next time I'm at home? 

But in the meantime it gave me new ideas of stuff to practice with him. He's getting better at naming and forming sentences/phrases but now I know that he has trouble with reading and with determining various factors about images. So maybe when doing flashcards I can ask him to describe the images to me? (like "what color is this animal" and ask him to respond with a sentence like "the frog is green") And then I can also see if he has trouble determining descriptive terms about images, or if he has trouble deciding which image matches the description given (like, I could hold up three cards and ask which one is green) The problem with that method is that it's easier for him to point at something than it is to tell me which one is green, but maybe I could work with that too? Like have him tell me the names of three images on different cards, and then ask him to tell me which one is the green one? 

It was interesting to see him have this problem with adjectives, because I didn't really know he had it. 

I have two types of flashcards for my dad, some that are just for basic naming, and some that are for making sentences. I've noticed he still has problems just getting out words when he's trying to say what something is called, so I wanted to start at a lower level with that. So far I've printed out some animals, and basic household/school items and furniture.

The other flashcards I have are the first ones I tried with him, to get him to work on sentences. He'll often only be able to get out one word to try to get others to figure out what he's talking about. He can sometimes put two or three words together to make a phrase ("walking around" , "i'm tired", ect) but tends to stick to the ones he uses frequently and remembers the best. He doesn't usually try to make an effort to make up new sentences or groupings of words to make new phrases, and I want to try to help him with that.

With these flashcards, I have him make simple sentences, telling me what the people in the images are doing (ex: "He is swimming" "She is dancing")

I have those flashcards separated out into three sections; easy ones, hard ones, and sports. (He's not very good at sports) The easy ones have images that he can make into really simple three-word sentences ("They are cooking") and the hard ones require more words to say what's going on in the picture ("She is knocking on the door") and I try to mix a few hard ones in with the easy ones.

I started off with just the phrase cards, because back when he was going to speech therapy, I'm told that's what his therapist was working on with him. But I ended up using some simple naming cards as well, since I've noticed he tends to have problems with just being able to say the name of any given object as well. I also thought it would be a good warm up to the phrase cards. 

I usually have to do these flashcard sessions online over Skype, since I don't live near him. Although I recently went home to visit my parents, and thought it would be a good opportunity to get to practice these cards in person, but it actually ended up being more difficult. My dad is very independent and kind of wants to do his own thing whenever he decides to do it, and likes to use me as help finding or carrying things when I'm around, so we ended up running more errands than practicing speech.

But, while I was home I was able to look at some of the speech therapy apps I'd asked him to download onto his iPad, and it seemed like he hadn't looked at them before. But being there gave me the chance to open them up and mess around with them, and then he started trying them out, so hopefully he'll use them now? I've read that having a touch element to speech therapy can help (like using apps on a touchscreen device or computer, or writing), so I'd really like him to try to use those as well.