River's Speech Progress

my cute little helper

As River's third birthday approaches, we're also rapidly approaching the end of his private speech therapy sessions. Once he turns three, the school district takes over any needed therapies.

River's made enough progress the last couple months that I don't think we'll have him evaluated by the district. Because he's on or above age level expectations for everything else, he'd only be eligible for weekly speech therapy sessions at the school, not full day preschool. And he's doing so well that he probably won't be eligible for those even.

His vocabulary is increasing every day and he's started vocalizing more of his signs (while he's doing them). His range of sounds has also increased as well. He used to use just a few sounds, but now uses almost all of them.

While he's using a lot more sounds, they're not always the correct ones. This is common with all small kiddos, but it's fun to keep track of which words they get twisted up. Some of Sunshine's are listed here and here. It's always cute to listen to kiddos as they start to talk.

- t for k (if you know the kids real names, substitute the first sound with a T, and just say the first syllable of their names)
- pubby for puppy (I think this one's the cutest- he has two stuffed pubbies that are his favorite stuffies)
- pabba for pappa
- are for water (he's dropping the w and t and it makes him sound like a pirate)
- oowa for soda
- nack for snack
- nyo for yogurt (I'm not sure why this one and milk are so hard for him to say)
- nyoke for milk
- toot for cute (seriously cute to hear him say something is "toot")
- tool for cool
- tiss for kiss
- hone for phone
- pah for pocket (shorts with pockets are the best in his opinion)

Doggy and daddy come out very similar and sometimes it's really hard to figure out which one he means.

Hotel Transylvania 2 is obviously too hard for him to say, so he just calls it "bleh" (bleh bleh bleh)
Another favorite is Minions, which he calls "in" or "inion" or "bah buh buh" (because of the very beginning).

He's trying to figure out what to call grownups, especially since the men he knows are fathers of his friends and the women he knows are mothers of his friends. So men are daddy and women are mommy, which is easier than Dash's daddy, or Finn's mommy. We're working on that one.

He's putting words together with some repetition as he learns how to string words together.
- truck, big truck
- tractor, big tractor
- ooowaooo: any vehicle with a flashing light
- dight: the light on any emergency or construction vehicle
- more pop: popsicle or popcorn
- chicks, help?: he likes to help me feed and water the chicks
- more toad please: as he signed more; he wanted to look again at the neighbor's toad in their stream