May 2018 Apraxia Awareness Month
In sharing my personal journey from grief to a place of joy, I hope to inspire others to advocate for increased collaboration, to improve our children’s speech and language skills!
I am a speech language pathologist but I am also a mother. I am also a mother of a 4 year old with childhood apraxia of speech. Being a specialist in the area of childhood apraxi of speech meant, I knew the many years of hard work my son had ahead of him. No training or classes could have prepared me for the fear, doubt and insecurity I would experience as the parent of a child with apraxia of speech.
In my profession as a Speech Language Pathologist, SLP I frequently work together and collaborate with parents, because we parents know our children best! I also work with primary care providers. The Pediatricians and Nurses are so appreciative to hear from me! They get to see their patients for 1 hour every 6 months to 1 year. However, I as an SLP am blessed to be able to see these children every week often multiple times a week. I also frequently work with other SLP specialists such as Craniofacial SLP’s. I have spent 15 minutes on the phone with a craniofacial speech language pathologist at Seattle children’s hospital and was able to leave the conversation with at least as much information as 3 hours of research on my own. I also often refer my clients to school based speech language pathologists to help with carryover of their skills to the school environment. Along the way I have come to the sad realization that specialists working accross environments is not as common as we would hope.
So what stops specialists, parents, and SLP’s from collaborating and working together?
Feelings:
Fear of Failure
Disappointment in Ourselves
Doubt and Insecurities
Those are just some feelings that I found have stopped myself from collaborating in the past. Reaching out and asking someone else for their help meant I had to accept that I was not perfect, and that I had areas to grow.
Think about it, we all have assumptions that are not actually helpful. However, in order to help the children we care about we need to think of it in terms of, "If I was a parent, SLP, or other professional would I want this person to reach out to me?"... "Well of course I would!"
Feelings that DO and DON’T Lead to successful collaboration
Through this journey with my son from failed collaboration to success, I have found that there are some feelings that do and don't help.
Feelings that DON'T Help:
“I feel”, feelings. WE have to take those “I FEEL” feelings and throw them out the window. They don’t help develop a WE.
Feelings that DO matter.
The feelings of the child we work with. They should feel happy and they should feel that the adults they work with care about the child’s feelings and not their own feelings.
My personal history collaborating for my son with Apraxia of Speech
When I first began seeking services for my son, I was told in several different ways:
“Can’t you just work with him?”
“Good thing you’re an SLP you can just work with him!”
Q: Can’t you just work with him?
A: “NO” I can’t just work with him, clearly if I could I woudn’t have been there at the assessment office reaching out, asking for support.
Disappointment, Doubt, Insecurity.
So here I was, beginning this journey to school based services filled with disappointment, doubt and insecurity. My son at the time was 3 years old and had a very limited consonant inventory of /m, w, p and b, d and n/. Do you think reaching out for help was the right thing to do?
Well, of course it was! However at the time, the feelings I had going into this new relationship with school district services were filled with Doubt, Dissapointment and Insecurity. Doubt, was I doing the right thing, this was going to be a long road for him Insecurity in myself and most of all Disappointment that I wasn’t enough for my child.
School district services began.
My son had a random list of very basic word structures consisting of Consonant: C and Vowel: V: CV, VC and CVC words that he worked on with myself and his school district SLP’s. His progress was slow and he was filled with frustration and lack of desire to communicate.
Taken in October 2017 this is the transcription of his show and tell, I as a mother could see in his face the disappointment he has when his message is not relayed correctly. He used many gestures to get his message across
|
Transcription |
10/25/18 |
|
I made it with Hot glue gun |
/my ma-di wi do du du/ |
|
Spin |
/bi/ |
|
Shell |
/dow/ |
|
Flower |
/?owa/ |
|
With hot glue gun |
/wi do du du/ |
|
I don’t know |
/I nu no/ |
|
Yep |
/jep/ |
|
Right there it broke |
/wi de I bo/ |
|
Big one |
/bi wu/ |
|
Fishy one |
/bi ne wu/ |
|
Beach |
/bi/ |
|
Beach in homer |
/bi ne noma/ |
|
With my family |
/wi my nami/ |
It took me 6 months to overcome my disappointment in myself and the doubt I had in my ability to work with my own son. These feelings were standing in my way of collaborating for the sake of my own child. I attended the Apraxia workshop presented by Dr. Susan Caspari in the Fall of 2017 at the AKSHA Convention. Dr. Caspari encouraged me and challenged me to get past my “own feelings”. She asked me “if you were his SLP at the school wouldn’t you want to have a parent involved?”
My answer was an overwhelming YES! I collaborate for all of my clients, why not collaborate with the school district SLP for my own son’s well being.
Number 1 Take Away- Don’t wait Collaborate
Only once my doubt, insecurity and feelings of disappointment in myself were gone could I actually see and develop a healthy and effective relationship with my son's school based SLP. A relationship that foccused on each of our strengths for the sake of the child we were serving, my very own son. The only feelings that belonged in this successful collaborate relationship were discussions of the way my child was feeling towards our treatment. We spoke every week, we shared prompts that worked, words he was having success with and struggles we were seeing. Video's, e-mails and texts kept us connected and improved our continuitiy and decrased my son's frustration.
After 5 Months Implementing the Core Word List
This transcription was taken 5 months later, after implementing a core word list both with school based services and in home therapy, we had moved from CVC words to CVCCVC words!
|
Transcription |
|
|
De my, De my lego man |
/de mai de mai wego ma/ |
|
And my brother lego man |
/e mai bu wego ma/ |
|
My brother get these lego man for show and tell |
/mai bug e de lego ma fo sow a tew/ |
|
No my brother did |
/no my bua did/ |
|
And my brother let me borrow them |
/a my buwa let me ba?a um/ |
|
A storm trooper |
/mai som ?opa / |
|
No too many persons |
/no doo me i pusons/ |
|
Yeah |
/ja/ |
|
Girl, girl |
/gu gu/ |
|
Two girls |
/du gu?s/ |
|
X this one |
/dis wu/ |
|
A Boy |
/boi/ |
|
HI Girl |
/Hi d?/ |
|
Yes |
/jes/ |
|
Yes |
/jes/ |
|
Oh, from my brother |
/oh fum my budo/ |
|
Yes |
/jes/ |
|
This one funny |
/di wu fui/ |
|
One face down one face up |
/wu fas dow a wu fas up/ |
|
Yeah |
/jah/ |
|
Why this one funny? |
/wAi vi wu fui/ |
|
A this storm trooper |
/A di sum ?upa/ |
|
Yes |
/jes/ |
|
No |
/no/ |
See what changes you notice.
Here is his consonant inventory, what changes do you notice?
|
Consonant Inventory |
2/23/18 |
|
Nasals |
m, n |
|
Glides |
w, j |
|
Stops |
p, b, d, t, k, g |
|
Fricatives |
h, s, f, v, sh |
|
Liquids |
l |
|
Affricates |
ch |
|
S Clusters |
st, sn, sm, sp, ns |
So what happened? What drove my son’s success?
Two great SLP’s who were able to put their egos aside, find that little bit of extra time that it takes to touch base weekly, and were able to work together to drive this child's, MY child’s success. I would also like to thank his first SLP, who first introduced the idea of apraxia. I can truthfully say I had blinders on and could not see my own son's apraxia. I was too close to the situation. Again, “Can’t you just work with him”. NO I can NOT JUST work with him! None of us can we are all better together!
How To collaborate
What collaboration works for you or your therapist? Some specialists use an online shared drive, or log into a shared file serve online that is HIPPA and password protected. Others set up 15 minute phone calls, or send video’s of the prompts they use. 15 minutes on the phone could save hours of wasted therapy time finding out that the treatment method you are trying was already attempted and failed or that they use a different treatment method that is successful. If we don’t reach out, and ask we will never know!
Don’t Wait Collaborate!
Here it is, YOUR call to action! Think of one client who you can collaborate for, and pick up the phone, take out your release of information and use it! Don't just file those ROI's into the filing cabinet, use them. Pull them out and fax them on! And remember, all those feelings they don't help the most important feelings of all, the feelings of the child you are raising and working for!
Please share your successful collaboration with me I would love to hear your story!
cshay@takehomespeech.net
