Differing therapy

As many know, Alvin has dyspraxia, along with neurofibromatosis. Dyspraxia has made it hard for him with his 1st grade sight words, especially spelling them.

In in attempt to use differing kind of therapies to help him bridge the gap between his brain and his fingers/hands, I ordered Somasix Magnetic Numbers and Letters from Amazon. Let me just tell you, this has been a wonder tool in helping him with spelling. His handwriting is horrid at best, but using these numbers and letters, we are able to have him form the spelling words out on our fridge. He is able to learn to spell his words much faster than just trying to memorize how to write letters on a paper. Because of his newest IEP review, he is allowed to use number and letter models on his tests, so using these magnets at home is helping him with recognizing the letters for use with his models at school.

The letters and numbers themselves are plastic with little magnets on them. Unlike the cheap dollar store ones we've had in previous years, these seem to be of a higher quality. The colors are vibrant and they have blue. Alvin's favorite color. Always a win in this house!

Disclaimer: I received this product at a reduced cost in exchange for my honest review. All opinions and thoughts are my own and are 100% honest.

Alvin was goofing off. Dr Alvin it is.

Speech Evaluation

Today was Alvin's speech evaluation for private speech services. It was long and brutal. Well, to me anyway. He seemed like he was having fun the whole time. About halfway through the eval, the SLP (speech language pathologist) brought the OT (occupational therapist) in to observe the eval. After doing some minor evals of her own, and some talking between the two of them, they feel confident that Alvin has Global Dyspraxia aka Developmental Dyspraxia. In other words, it's not just his speech that is being misinturpreted, but everything. They said that the dyspraxia would cause the low tone, drooling, motor control issues, and some of the sensory issues, if not all of them. So, yeah. Next stop is to see the neurodevelopmental pediatrician. How much of this is NF, and how much isn't, we don't know. Wonderful. Ugh. I'll get a full write up of the evaluations in the mail sometime in the next few days, so look for those once I get them. Anyway, some pics from today. They are pretty boring though, so you can skip them if you want.

 Spontaneous speech evaluation. The SLP was sitting behind that two way mirror and listening to him babble to himself while playing.

The articulation evaluation. She'd say something and he was supposed to repeat it back. Supposed to being the operative phrase.