Speech therapy and Down syndrome in the real world.

If you are reading this and you are a parent of a child with Down syndrome you are probably very familiar with speech therapy.  We started dragging taking April to additional speech therapy when she was 14 months old.  I say additional because the early intervention services she received at home included some speech therapy.  I signed her up for a very controversial, at the time, therapy.  This radical therapy was sign language!  Add to that more speech at school and weekly private pay sessions until she reached high school.  We practiced saying the names of her siblings, everyday objects, her name, her street address, 3 word sentences, 4 word sentences and on and on and on…………………..

Fast forward to today.  My advice is to concentrate on real life situations.  We want people to understand our children in the real world and what is more real than Starbucks??????The next time you have your darling child at therapy working on buh, buh, buh….bottle just know that all too soon she/he will have to learn to say:

TALL, SKINNY, JAVA CHIP FRAPPUCINNO PLEASE

I’m just saying, important real life stuff!  Be sure to pass this on to your therapist because it’s never too early to practice saying Frappuccino.