Last Day of Mini CHAMP

So, the last day has come and gone.  It started with a receptive language test, and I wrote down every area where he struggled, for us to focus on later.  These include things like:

• Prepositions: in back of, behind, in front of
• Sequential order: first, then, last, etc
• Understanding not/doesn't
• Pronouns: his/hers, and he/she/they
• Most/least
• Identifying words by their beginning letter sound
• Rhyming
• Same/different
• Together/apart

Whew.  I'll get a formal report of the language test in a few days, but it's just so interesting to me how he does so well with academic stuff (he aced the colors, numbers, shapes, letters, sight words, and even adjectives like biggest, smallest, longest, etc) but struggles so much with basic language.

He then worked on his goals of saying words that start with D and F.  He's doing so well!  I was given a report that states that in the first session he had 10% accuracy of his words beginning with D, and 0% accuracy of the words beginning with F.  By the end of the second day, with cueing, he was getting 73% accuracy of D words and 90% accuracy of F words.  Whoo hoo, go Kiddo!  I'll get a report in a few days of today's progress, so I'm looking forward to seeing the results of his overall progress.

He had lots of fun with the clinicians today, but his favorite game was collecting Angry Birds after saying his words to put on a parachute.  After he had collected them all, he got to make them fly, which he was so excited about, he started doing his marching dance while they were playing with the parachute.  :)

By the end, even though he was tired, he was counting with four and five both starting with an F sound, and Jodi and I, who were sitting in the observation room, were clapping and cheering together, haha.  Awesome, proud moment for both of us.

The exhausted Kiddo with Jodi (in blue) and his clinicians Michele, Erica and Courtney

Honestly, I had this moment during one of the sessions where I felt so overwhelmed and lost and I put my head down on the little table and wanted to cry.  To think that we're spending three days, three sessions a day, working on two sounds that he's been working on in therapy already for a while, and will need more practice on for a while, well sometimes it just doesn't seem fair.  He still has so far to go.  And I was thinking that he's getting as much therapy in these three days as he does privately in three months.  How long is this going to take for him to talk like his peers?  But whenever I feel that way, I try to think of the positive and how far he has come.   He's made 90% progress on his F sound in two days, imagine what it will be after three?  These ladies know what they're doing and I see the results.

In fact, in the elevator as we were going up to our hotel room a man asked him how old he was.  Kiddo said proudly "Five!" (with the F sound, whoo hoo!) And the man laughed. "Five?" he said. "Before you know it, you'll be twenty!" And Kiddo giggled at that.

And as if that didn't make me proud enough, when we made it back to our hotel, he proudly declared "I'm back!" a phrase they had been working on with him in day two.

I am so proud of all the hard work he and Jodi and the clinicians did.  I love CHAMP, but even moreso, do I love my little Champ who always amazes me with how hard he works to learn what comes so easily to others.  He inspires me.