A picture’s worth a thousand words

So last week we bought a printer. You may have seen I wrote about how much Oscar was loving the box? We bought it for several reasons, one being to support Oscar’s speech development, which as I’ve explained before is delayed. One of his issues is not only does it take him a long time to ‘get’ words, he seems to use them and then ‘lose’ them again. So in order to provide a visual support to the words he discovers, we decided to print images out and have them accessible to him at all times. Which is how Ben and I found ourselves hard at work with Google images and the laminator last night.

What do you think? We also have cards for Key, Cheese and Apple.

I decided to use a couple of pictures for each word, choosing a selection of drawings, illustrations and photos. I have no idea if this is the ‘right’ thing to do, but I wanted to see if he could identify each picture as the word, regardless of how they appeared. I’ve also added the actual word, not that he can read yet, but just to get him used to associating the letters with the item as he gets older. Again I have no idea if this is the ‘right’ thing to do, but it felt right to me and as such I went with it!

We put them up all around the lounge and kitchen last night and you should have seen his face this morning. It was like Christmas had come early. He ran from one picture to the next, saying the correct word in front of each. The joy was palpable, his and mine! His favourite seems to be “Fish”. We also made some animal cards, as although he hasn’t got the names down just yet, he is making the correct noises each time for Dog, Cat and Sheep.

Mmmmmeeeeeehhhhh

Meeeeeow

We’ll see if this helps the words to hang around any longer and I know there are words I’ve forgotten he can say like flower and elephant, so I’ll be adding to the collection tonight as well as when he gains new words. Putting the ‘Car’ images next to the front door also gave me the idea to have a go at more directive cards, such as bed, bath, garden, food, drink that sort of thing. Not only will it encourage him to link the word with the image, but hopefully we can both use it to indicate what we want to happen (I’ll let you know how that goes!).

For now he’s happy to run up to the Fish and shout something that sounds to me like “It’s a Fish”!

And that makes me happy.

 

 

 

What’s more fun than a box?

So Oscar’s speech is somewhat delayed. We’ve been looking at various ways of making his communication easier, but have also noticed he’s a really visual learner. So for example last week’s big word was Fish. He got that from watching a Baby TV cartoon with a fish in it several times (it was Baby Art if you’re interested. It’s a wordless cartoon, but I say the words of the things as they appear – he seems to like it) Anyway, we have also noticed that he’ll use a word, but that sometimes it’ll disappear, sometimes to reappear weeks later, sometimes not. We want to be sure that we reinforce the words he is learning, as well as teaching him new ones, so have decided a picture of the word he has acquired (mainly nouns at this stage) somewhere prominent in the house would be a great visual reminder.

Which is one of the reasons Ben came home with a printer yesterday. It’s very exciting, we haven’t had a printer since about 1999! We plan to get cracking with the pictures asap – we may even get a laminater to help them stand up to Hurricane Toddler that regularly bowls round this house.

But for now, it came in a box. A bloody big box. And that’s proved more fun than anything.

We’ll let you know how the pictures go!

What’s in here then?

Big enough for a boy in here?

If I tip it up…

… yep that’ll work!

Ooooo! Check me!

The Twos

The terrible twos. They really are terrible. In fact, I’d go as far as to say they suck. Big time. Not just for me, but for him too. We had something of an epic fail in the past week, one behavioural disaster after another. Some weeks are just like that I guess. It started with a return to toddler group after the summer break. Hammer is big, it’s noisy and it’s busier than a branch of Next on the first day of the sale. It’s full on, always has been. In the past he’s been OK with it, sometimes good, sometimes not so good. Last week was not a good week. Then there was a failed trip to the Hen House. Meh, it happens I guess. It’s this ‘pushing’ phase that’s doing my nut. I know it’s his way (whether right or wrong) of expressing himself (“you’re in my space/touching my stuff/touching stuff I deem to be mine because I glanced at it 20 minutes ago and I don’t like it”). It’s not malicious. But other people don’t see that. They just glare and in some cases admonish me for his behaviour. His speech delayed, frustrated, two year old behaviour. Sigh.

So what do I do? Seriously? Much of the advice given by official channels is to ignore bad behaviour (er not always possible, especially in public when it’s involving other children) and getting them to talk through their feelings (hmmm can we park that one for now?), in fact much of the advice just seems to be ‘well yeah, this is going to happen and you gotta ride it out best you can honey, sorry. We’ll talk again when he’s three, OK?’. My initial reaction on Friday was to never take him out again. Ever. Again. We’ll just stay in I thought. He wont meet other children, but that way he can’t push them (his modus operadi) and no one will look at me like I’ve pissed in the punch!

I’m not serious of course. What would that teach him? Nada, nothing, zip! I know that really. Just some days, I feel like I’m walking a tightrope. Blindfold. With my hands tied behind my back. Whilst reciting Chaucer (I really hated Chaucer at A’level). Sometimes  I’m just so tired to my bones with all this worry and indecision and feeling just not quite good enough, that the path of least resistance just starts to look mighty appealing.

Yeah, the last week was not a good week.

But then, actually, wasn’t it? Thursday, Friday and Saturday could have been better. Sure. Things could have gone more the way I wanted them to, but ya’ know, no one died. And Sunday’s trip to Alice Holt and Tuesday’s trip to The Hen House, whilst embarked upon with gritted teeth, worked out amazingly well. No pushing, minimal squealing, making friends and laughing like a loon (him not me. Well a bit me 😉 )

Taking turns

Swinging happy

And then there’s the speech. The delay in Oscar’s speech is, I feel, impacting greatly on his behaviour, but guess what? Those pesky little words are starting to emerge. Slowly, and in a really peculiar order, but in the last week my boy suddenly has something of a vocabulary. It’s a mixtures of single words like ‘ready’, ‘water’, ‘more’ and ‘flower’ and then even some short phrases like ‘another one’ and ‘I don’t want to’! Whether they ‘stick’ and he continues to use them regularly is yet to be seen (apologies for my cautious tone, but we’ve been here before. Said bear four times in one day, never said it again) but in a week when everything was dreadful, actually it wasn’t at all. He even has a name for me now! I’m Nuhnuh. Just when you think it couldn’t be worse, it suddenly isn’t. That’s the twos for you.

The terrible, terrifying, wonderful twos.