Welcome to my first blog post. Whether you are in contact with Erika every day at school, or you are a friend or family member, I hope you will find this blog to be a valuable way to stay in touch with the most up-to-date news in Erika's world. Please check back frequently. You can access this page directly from the Erika's World home page. This is my first commitment to blogging, and I feel that it's the best way to keep everybody informed for Erika's benefit.
As I promised Erika's teacher, I would like to share a link to an Elmo's World segment (forward to 4:20) which Erika has been watching quite a bit lately. If you have spent any time with Erika over the last few weeks, you will undoubtedly recognize some of the phrases from this short clip, as Erika has been incorporating them into her repertoire of echolalia.
The video features a deaf boy named Alex. It is possible that she is intrigued by the use of signing. Signing was a popular communication strategy during some of her preschool classes, used between a few teachers and SLP's and the nonverbal (or pre-verbal) preschool crowd. During the special ed preschool years, ASL got a lot of lip service but its actual use in the schools was quite limited. A person cannot survive on "more," "milk," "yes," and "all done" alone. Because I had three late talkers, we invested in several Signing Time videos, and our use of signing at home far exceeded what the teachers were using at school (Erika's brother used almost 50 signs before he started talking, shortly after starting his four-year-old preschool year).
Erika really took to the Signing Time video series, which did an excellent job conveying the meaning of the words (visuals, accompanied by the written word and many instances of adults and children saying the word). But signing fell by the wayside when Erika figured out that it really didn't get her anywhere at school. What good was this secret language, which only her mom, her siblings, and the good folks from the Signing Time videos understood? In the following video clip, they use two of the many signs that she knows, the signs for "banana" and "milk."
Of all of the Elmo's World segments at her disposal on youtube, I find it quite remarkable that she has tuned in so frequently to this one which features a deaf boy successfully communicating, despite his disability. Do you think Erika's trying to tell us something?
Echolalic excerpts: "Go Fish." "That's another way he finds out" (...what someone is saying) "We had bananas and milk."
Elmo's World - Ears (forward to 4:20)
-Erika's Mom
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