Happy dance time! We have a new, perfectly pronounced word coming from Tucker’s cute little lips. “Open!” In the past, he’s said “stuck” when he wants us to open the rear of a truck, the cockpit of an airplane or (since Halloween) a Kit Kat package. He’ll answer with “that” or “yes” when we ask him if he wants it opened. Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been firm in pushing him to at least try to say “open” instead. We started with “o” and then tried to add “pen” which first sounded nothing like it should. He graduated from “o…that” to “o…pee” to “o…(not sure)” to “o…pin” and now is saying “open” perfectly. It’s so gratifying to see that pushing him works. It’s even more gratifying to know that his mouth, tongue, jaw, brain, or whatever part is sometimes stuck is able to say “open” because it’s been one of those weird words he’s refused for months. It’s funny. There are words that he gets quickly. Ones that you’d think would be hard, including “Caillou” which he’s said clearly for more than a year. He’ll also say “Mommy, go do bubbles?” perfectly all the time and has for a long time. But on “open,” he got stuck. I don’t know why. But he got unstuck and now has a new perfect word to add to his growing list. YAY, Tucker! Happy mommy today.
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by Kristi Campbell
Henriette - Like like like! Yay you Tucker!!! 🙂November 9, 2012 – 12:06 am
Julie - excellent – nice work Kristi and Tucker! and what exactly does “mommy go do bubbles?” refer to?!!November 9, 2012 – 12:26 am
admin - Thanks, Julie! “Mommy go do bubbles” means mommy and Tucker go to the backyard and blow bubbles. It’s a favorite thing.November 9, 2012 – 10:16 am
Sara - Yaay, Tucker! Plosives are hard. Good on him!
….and btw, Calliou actually isn’t that hard, phoneme-wise. It just seems like it’d be hard b/c it’s tricky to spell (i.e. it LOOKS hard).
So how is he with B sounds? Or T sounds: can he say his own name well?
Hurray for Tuck, hurray for you, and hurray for the behavioral method!November 9, 2012 – 10:13 am
admin - Thanks Sara! B sounds are awesome. With T sounds, it varies. When he sees the letter T, he says “Tee!” and knows it’s for Tucker. He’ll also ask for TV on. He stumbles on his name a little bit and says it really quietly like he’s not confident about it. And I think Tucker is sort of hard to say, especially with the “ck” which is rarely pronounced correctly (in fact, the only word I can think of where it is pronounced correctly is “stuck”).November 9, 2012 – 10:20 am
MomboMombo - Open! – this opens the floodgate – more words will be spoken every day!!!
yippeeee!November 9, 2012 – 8:10 pm
admin - Yipppeee indeed. Although when I proudly bragged about this to his teacher, she wrote back something along the lines of “oh well I’m glad he modeled this word at home, he’s been using it here for months.” WTF.November 9, 2012 – 10:33 pm
Sara - Maybe you should ask the teacher what other words he regularly says with ease, and more importantly, which ones SHE’S noticed he stumbles on. Then you can work on the ones he fumbles and also would know which ones he’s faking not being able to say b/c he says them at school. (Not that he’s a faker, but some words may be circumstantial for him and you could get him comfortable saying them anywhere.)November 11, 2012 – 6:51 pm
admin - Sara, she’s usually really good about letting me know. We have a notebook in Tucker’s backpack that she writes in every day. I was just annoyed as we started working on “open” back this summer BEFORE school. I thought it was a breakthrough and she’d already heard it. But you’re right, there are definitely words that are circumstantial. And he’s sometimes a faker.November 11, 2012 – 7:48 pm