I wanted to mention two things that might be helpful. I had a son who could not make the letter c or g sounds. He would use the tip of his tongue instead. I had him checked out by some occupational therapists and they said that he had a hard time communicating but that was all. I could take him to their preschool if I wanted to get their services. He was 3-4 years old. I realized that he could make the guttural sound in his throat and that was the beginning of being able to formulate those sounds. So when I read books to him I would make him make those gutteral sounds in his throat with me as we said words such as ‘cat’ or ‘goat’. I called them monster c and monster g. Then I would have him add in the end of that word after he made the monster (gutteral) sound. Eventually his brain connected the two together and he was able to say all of this words that had c’s and g’s. It took several months of working on it every day. Such as:
——-oat for goat
——-at for cat and so on.
The line is for the sound. Try to close your throat and then blow air though it from your diaphragm. Like if you are cleaning your glasses with your breath, use that sound. He was a younger brother so he was able to start reading at age 5, but I started all of that at age 3-4. I wondered how he started to read actually! I felt like a failure because I didn’t know that he was already reading! I failed him because we didn’t have to do the Abeka curriculum??
I had another son, his older brother, who was going blind in one eye, and I had no idea! I had him tested and that is what they told me. We started patching the good eye after taking him to a couple of eye doctors, one was at children’s hospital in Colorado. We had to get him to do eye exercises every day while he patched the good eye. I also had him play games on his phone while he patched, this really helped! He also had sensory processing disorder. So tantrums were had daily as he was trying to communicate how he felt about everything. One thing that helped was getting him dressed at night in regular clothes instead of his pajamas if we wanted to get somewhere on time in the morning. He couldn’t stand the feeling of clothes and would have to get used to wearing new laundered ones, and he had to have the waist straps on the pants buttoned tight, tight! in order to wear jeans and only moon boots were worn. If we went anywhere one day, then it was the next day that his tantrums would start. There are many books that are written on SPD and they helped me a lot to understand what and why, but then things always change and interweave. His tantrums subsided around age 8. I had taken him to an occupational therapist and she had said that children turn the corner when they become 8, she made me hopeful. She and another doctor said that it was ok to close him into his room for tantrums, so that I could look at Pinterest, for my own eye candy at that moment while I held the bedroom door knob that didn’t lock, while he screamed. He wouldn’t actually come to me either! As he was too stubborn. So I started reading the book love and logic. Chores were what I used for punishment if he didn’t come to me when I called for him. Another book that I suggest talked about ‘tomato staking’. It’s more of a ‘time in’ instead of a ‘time out’ which didn’t work if they don’t care about time outs. They will just play anyway, in time out. We did take gluten out of their diets, went to a holistic doctor, did this program that dealt with brain highways that used creeping and crawling to help him cross his ‘midline’. Etc. it all helped. And made time for play time. Through all of this we had the oldest on a year long waiting list to be tested for autism! Yes a year long waiting list at children’s hospital! I finally got there! And had a million situations that I had documented for about 5 of these doctors at this round table! So I told them EVERYTHING. I sensed that they were running out of time…I had to get it all in for my own sake! Then they evaluated him while I was in the car. Then they said, well he could have sleep apnea…Really?!? That’s it? No autism? Ok so we did the sleep study while I slept with him in the bed at the hospital. He had a mild form of it but nothing that was overwhelmingly bad. So that’s when they suggested occupational therapy. As I mentioned above. So when we went to the holistic doctor they said that he was anemic like me! So that was it. So we both took some liquid Floradix for a while. If you are anemic your brain does not get the blood flow that it needs for learning or retention of anything taught, so that explained a lot. He was at occupational therapy for about 6 months and that was it! I wanted it to be worse for my own sake I think, but it wasn’t.
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