Thinking of looking up speech therapy stuff on YouTube. I know this is gonna sound a little like I have some internalized ableism going on, and I admit that maybe I do, but I’m sick of people picking on me for the way I talk. I’m sick of people seemingly purposefully misunderstanding me just because I have autism. It’s like they hear my voice, and a little switch turns on in their brains that says “oh, don’t listen to him, he’s clearly disabled.” I know I’m speaking perfectly clearly. I have recorded myself speaking. I understand myself fine, even with the odd voice quirks.
“9f c9urse I kn9w what I’m d9ing. Even th9ugh they all d9n’t 6elieve me, that’s fine. I kn9w m9re a69ut them than they c9uld ever h9pe t9 kn9w. I kn9w may6e m9re than I sh9uld. They say the eyes are the wind9ws t9 the s9ul, and every time s9me9ne l99ks at me I realise s9mething new. There’s never a time where I d9n’t take in the nuances, the little things that make my friends my friends. Call me gentle all y9u’d like, 6ut kn9wledge never c9mes with9ut suffering.
Suffering.
It’s a strange little w9rd, sp9ken s9 li6erally in the Alternian and 6eforan dialects that it hardly seems t9 have a definiti9n. 6ut we here, we twelve, kn9w it deeper than it can ever 6e written in 699ks. It is carved into Mituna’s 6ones, int9 Cr9nus’ skin, int9 Rufi9h’s smile, int9 P9rrim’s every vindictive w9rd. These examples are just examples, and they d9 n9t undermine 9ur st9ry.
We twelve are the f9ll9wers 9f the ap9calypse; the 6ringers 9f a new age wr9ught in grey and 9il-slick hues. We are wh9 we are, and n9 am9unt 9f empty sweeps may change us. Y9u may n9t change me, n9 matter h9w I waver in the currents 9f time. C9me f9r me with knives and with daggers and with sickles; I kn9w all t99 well the pain y9u wish t9 strike acr9ss my aged flesh. T9 exp9se the cherry fl9wing underneath w9uld 9nly 6e a f99l’s act. I kn9w all, and I will make all kn9wn in due time.
My name is Kankri Vantas, and I am the Seer 9f 6L99d.”
“You guys shouldn’t have married,” Danielle said, clicking her tongue. “It’s too much.”
Valerie Gray Fenton rolled her eyes. “Pizza’s in the oven, emergency contacts are on the fridge. James has two bottles in the fridge full of chocolate milk if he gets thirsty. Ivy can have whatever as long as it’s not too sugary. You know how she is. Oh, and your nose ring,” Valerie pointed at it and her nose crinkled, as if smelling something foul. “Trust me, you might want to take that out. James likes to pull on jewelry now.”
As if to accentuate her point, Valerie’s child reached up from Danielle’s lap, grasping at nothing with tiny fingers. She grabbed his arms and pulled them down before blowing her bangs back with an annoyed breath. “Great. Anything else?”
“Um …” Valerie paused, tapping her index finger to her chin. “Bedtime by eight o’ clock, we’ll be back around nine.”
Daniel Gray Fenton poked his head from around the corner, where he’d been cutting up watermelon for Ivy to eat. “Play set is in the basement.”
“Play set,” Danielle deadpanned.
Danny shrugged, popped a piece of watermelon in his mouth, and said, “Baby shower gift from Vlad. Keeps Ivy from getting distracted and flying off.”
“It does not!” Ivy yelled from the kitchen table.
Danny walked up to Danielle and winked. “She’s not too difficult to handle, promise. Just keep her busy and she’ll be fine.”
“Oh! James’ diapers are in his room … Danny, am I forgetting anything?”
“Dani is almost thirty, she can figure it out.”
“Right,” Valerie said, nodding her head in satisfaction. “Right. We’ll pay you when we get back.”
“Oh, you don’t need to pay—”
“We’ll pay you,” Danny said quickly, cutting her off. “For the trouble.”
“ … Okay?” Danielle said, once again grabbing James’ hands to keep him from pulling at her nose ring.
“Ivy!” Valerie yelled. “Come give Mommy a hug!”
Ivy, newly six, bounded from the kitchen and into her mother’s arms, curls bouncing all the way. Valerie set her down and crouched to become level with her. “And help Aunt Dani with James, okay?”
“Okay!” Ivy shouted, saluting. “You can count on me!”
“We’ll see you in the morning,” Danny said while he put his coat on. Afterwards, he reached down, placed a kiss on her forehead, and ruffled her hair. “Be good, okay?”
“I’m always good!” Ivy pouted.
“Then be even better than good, hm?” Danny turned to open the door. “Let’s go, Val.”
“Okay. Bye, Dani!”
“See you soon,” Danielle said, though it lacked the energy that Valerie’s salutation had.
The door closed behind them.
“Watermelon?” Ivy offered, holding up a single piece of watermelon that she had had crushed in her hand the entire time. Her palm glistened with the juice.
“Um, no thanks,” Danielle said.
“I like when you come see me. I like your nose.” Ivy pointed at Danielle’s nose ring and smiled. “It’s pretty. I like playing with you. Can we go see Aunt Dora? She has horsies and they let me ride them sometimes. Have you ever ridden a horsie?”
“Can’t say I have.”
“Oh, it’s fun. Aunt Dora lets me ride them sometimes. None of the kids in kindergarten have rode a horsie, either. Not even Alice, and she’s my bestest friend.”
“I thought I was your best friend,” Danielle said, fake-hurt.
“Oh! You are. You’re my bestest old friend, promise. Alice is my bestest kid friend. Have you ever met Alice’s mommy? She’s really nice. She has lots of plants and she tells me how to water them.”
Danielle snorted, thinking about Sam and her plant-covered studio apartment. “Yeah, I know her. We both come to your parents’ Thanksgiving, remember?”
“Oh, yeah!” Ivy clapped. “And Mommy makes pumpkin pie and Alice’s mommy brings banana pudding and you bring lots and lots of soda!”
“Yes, I do,” Danielle affirmed. “Did you finish your watermelon?”
Ivy gasped. “No!” she yelled, and she turned around and ran into the kitchen.
“Baba!” James yelled, climbing clumsily out of Danielle’s lap. “Baba!”
“Ivy!” Danielle yelled, struggling to balance James before he fell. “Can you get James’ bottle!”
“Mhm!” Ivy shouted back.
James, now standing on two chubby legs, staggered towards the kitchen, tripped over a forgotten toy, and promptly fell through the floor.
Through.
A crashing noise came from the kitchen, followed by Ivy yelling a quick, “Sorry! I fix it!”
Danielle’s train of thought halted in panic. Basement, kitchen. Basement, kitchen. Okay, she decided. Basement first. She took a deep breath and dove headfirst through the floor. A quick glance at the floor below her revealed that he had not fallen to his death. The air around her, however, was empty as well. She shook her head and blinked, wondering if he’d fallen all the way to the Earth’s core and burnt up on the way there.
“Baba?”
Danielle looked up and heaved a sigh of relief. There he was, upside down, sitting on the ceiling. His dark hair stuck up around him.
“There you are,” she murmured, flying back up to grab him. “Don’t do that. You can’t die five minutes after your parents leave.”
James, in contrast, was beginning to look upset. “Mmmm!” he shouted wordlessly, pointing at his mouth.
“Yes, yes, your ‘baba.’ Let’s go get it, okay? Hm?”
James stared at her, his blue-green eyes swirling with emotion, before he nodded slowly. Danielle flew them both back through the ceiling and into the kitchen, where Danielle witnessed the second mishap of the night. She’d almost forgotten. And it wasn’t even 5:30 yet.
The contents of the fridge were everywhere, and Ivy was slowly putting everything back in. She looked at Danielle guiltily as she touched down and set James on the floor.
She almost yelled. Taking a deep breath and reminding herself that it had been an accident, she asked, “What happened?”
“The bottle was too high. I had to float up to get it,” Ivy supplied, as though that explained everything.
Danielle looked at the spilled chocolate milk and then to one of the full bottles beside it. She picked one up and handed it to James, who tottered into the living room with the bottle to his mouth. “And?”
“Sorry, Aunt Dani,” Ivy said, tears welling in her eyes.
If there was one thing Danielle could not handle, it was crying. “No, no! It’s okay, it was an accident! Here; help me clean it up and it’ll be like nothing ever happened, hm? And then we can go downstairs and play, okay?”
Across the sea of fallen food items, the oven beeped urgently. Oh, yeah. The pizza.
Despite Danielle’s reassurances, Ivy started to cry.
When I was visiting home, my dad took me to the library, where he was trying to read a book. He showed it to me, pointed at a sentence, and said a completely different sentence out loud. I told him that wasn't what the book said, and he agreed, saying "jumbled"
I'd always thought that he could read better than he could understand spoken words, because he'll frequently ask people to write something down if he's not understanding it or if it's really important to him. But he told me he has trouble with reading "sometimes" and that long pages are more difficult than quick sentences, like a text message or email.
So I want to try to incorporate reading into his therapy as well, not just looking at a picture and saying the word. And I think what could help a lot with this is some of the apps he has/ that I want him to download for his iPad. He has a few different apps that will show a picture with the word under it, and then you can press a button to hear the word spoken to you.
I want him to download an app called Little Finder, which is a game based around that very concept. But he really did not seem interested in it. I meant to download it for him while I was at home and make him look at it, cause then at least I know he's doing it, but I forgot.
I had also asked him to download an app called SeeTouchLearn that I got to see in action while I was home. And it's freaking awesome. It has different "lessons" in it where it will show a few images and ask you to find a specific thing out loud, and there's also written directions at the top. (ex: "Click on the dog" and you have to pick the right one out of three different animals) And then the prompts get harder within each lesson, while sticking to the same theme ( so if it's animals, the next prompts would be "Which one says woof?" and "Which one chases cats?", and if it was something like food would have prompts like "Which one is green?") which was AWESOME cause I could tell he was struggling with that so I could finally find something to work with him on. And you can even create your own lessons with pictures that it gives you, or you can import your own.
And this would all be INCREDIBLE, except that you have to download different image packs, and there's so many of them but they cost like $4 each and I wouldn't even know where to start or which ones to download first. I want him to have a range of images to learn and figure out, so I wouldn't want to buy only animals and food because then he would probably just memorize those ones. And I don't think he'd actually pay for them, he's kind of stingy.
I really wanted to look at that app more, maybe purchase some packs and make some lessons, but didn't have the time. Maybe something I can do next time I'm at home?
But in the meantime it gave me new ideas of stuff to practice with him. He's getting better at naming and forming sentences/phrases but now I know that he has trouble with reading and with determining various factors about images. So maybe when doing flashcards I can ask him to describe the images to me? (like "what color is this animal" and ask him to respond with a sentence like "the frog is green") And then I can also see if he has trouble determining descriptive terms about images, or if he has trouble deciding which image matches the description given (like, I could hold up three cards and ask which one is green) The problem with that method is that it's easier for him to point at something than it is to tell me which one is green, but maybe I could work with that too? Like have him tell me the names of three images on different cards, and then ask him to tell me which one is the green one?
It was interesting to see him have this problem with adjectives, because I didn't really know he had it.
When I was home I tried a new exercise with him, where I would hold up two cards and ask him a question about them (like "which person is older" or "which animal is faster") and he got all of them correct the first time, and very quickly, so I thought it was an exercise that was too easy for him. But maybe he has difficulty attributing adjectives to pictures when there's more to choose from instead?
I have two types of flashcards for my dad, some that are just for basic naming, and some that are for making sentences. I've noticed he still has problems just getting out words when he's trying to say what something is called, so I wanted to start at a lower level with that. So far I've printed out some animals, and basic household/school items and furniture.
The other flashcards I have are the first ones I tried with him, to get him to work on sentences. He'll often only be able to get out one word to try to get others to figure out what he's talking about. He can sometimes put two or three words together to make a phrase ("walking around" , "i'm tired", ect) but tends to stick to the ones he uses frequently and remembers the best. He doesn't usually try to make an effort to make up new sentences or groupings of words to make new phrases, and I want to try to help him with that.
With these flashcards, I have him make simple sentences, telling me what the people in the images are doing (ex: "He is swimming" "She is dancing")
I have those flashcards separated out into three sections; easy ones, hard ones, and sports. (He's not very good at sports) The easy ones have images that he can make into really simple three-word sentences ("They are cooking") and the hard ones require more words to say what's going on in the picture ("She is knocking on the door") and I try to mix a few hard ones in with the easy ones.
I started off with just the phrase cards, because back when he was going to speech therapy, I'm told that's what his therapist was working on with him. But I ended up using some simple naming cards as well, since I've noticed he tends to have problems with just being able to say the name of any given object as well. I also thought it would be a good warm up to the phrase cards.
I usually have to do these flashcard sessions online over Skype, since I don't live near him. Although I recently went home to visit my parents, and thought it would be a good opportunity to get to practice these cards in person, but it actually ended up being more difficult. My dad is very independent and kind of wants to do his own thing whenever he decides to do it, and likes to use me as help finding or carrying things when I'm around, so we ended up running more errands than practicing speech.
But, while I was home I was able to look at some of the speech therapy apps I'd asked him to download onto his iPad, and it seemed like he hadn't looked at them before. But being there gave me the chance to open them up and mess around with them, and then he started trying them out, so hopefully he'll use them now? I've read that having a touch element to speech therapy can help (like using apps on a touchscreen device or computer, or writing), so I'd really like him to try to use those as well.
He gets very tired very quickly, and since he spends his mornings running around (going to church, visiting his mom, walking around the mall, and going to the gym), he's usually already tired by the time I want to do flashcards with him, and wants to stop pretty soon after we've started (the longest I think we've ever practiced for is like 30 minutes). Ideally, I'd like to lengthen the amount of time he works on flashcards with me, (lwhen we first started he would only want to work for 10-15 minutes, and I'm hoping that we can work up to an hour), and then work with some of the apps later in the day.
