after school speech part 27

On Thursday, SJ had his weekly after school speech therapy session.  For once in a LONG time, we were actually on time.  No bad weather, no delay waiting for my husband to return from work and no traffic.  SJ's therapist seemed perplexed to see us on time (maybe even a minute early), but I told her I can be punctual occasionally. 

First, she worked on a Listening and Remembering Specific Details activity.  She showed SJ a picture. She then asked him a few questions and told him to remember them while she read a story to him.  After she read the story, she would ask him the questions again and add two additional questions.  The picture was to give visual cues.

The first questions were:
1.  Why did Lisa get a new jar of bubbles?
2. What color were the bubbles?
3. What size were the bubbles?

This was the story:  Lisa got a new jar of bubbles for her birthday.  Her mother told her she could not blow bubbles in the house, so she took them outside.  The bubbles in the jar were pink.  Lisa dipped the wand into the jar and blew through it.  Bubbles of all sizes came out of the wand.  Some were big and some were little.  Lisa watched all of them float away high in the sky.

After she read this story, she asked SJ the following questions:

1. Why did Lisa get a new jar of bubbles?
2. Was Lisa allowed to blow bubbles inside the house?
3. What color were the bubbles?
4. What size were the bubbles?
5 Where did the bubbles go?

SJ was able to answer all of these questions correctly.  She then read him a second story that was related to the picture, but didn't have a visual cue. 

This was the second story:  After lunch, Lisa took her jar of bubbles over to Patty's house.  Patty also had a jar of bubbles.  Lisa and Patty sat on the steps and blew bubbles.  They blew so many bubbles it looked like a bubble factory.  Some of the bubbles blew over to Mr. Green's yard.  Mr. Green's dog, Buffy, barked and jumped at the bubbles.  Lisa and Patty laughed.

After she read the second story, she asked SJ the following questions:

1. After lunch, where did Lisa take her jar of bubbles?  (He missed this one.)
2. Where did the children sit to blow bubbles?  (He missed this one.)
3. What did all the bubbles look like?  (He missed this one as well.)
4. Where did the bubbles blow? (He got this one correct.)
5. What started barking at the bubbles? (He also answered this one correctly.)
6. What was the dog's name? (He couldn't remember the dog's name.)

SJ has always had trouble remembering details.  I was impressed that he got all the questions correct after the first story.  However, I was not surprised that he missed most of the second set of questions.  He has trouble focusing on too many details.  This is a skill that we will have to continue to work on. 

She also worked on Problem/Solutions.  She used a visual chart that had a problem box in the center and two solution boxes attached to it.  She gave SJ some problems and he had to come up with two possible solutions.  For example:  Your pocket has a hole in it.  Tell me the problem and two solutions.  He was to answer that things may fall out of his pocket.  For the solutions, he was to answer to have someone sew the pocket or to not put things in his pocket. 

He did okay with this exercise, but he did sometimes have trouble finding a second solution.  She said she is going to continue working on both the Problem/Solution and being able to listen and recall more details.  I am glad that she is focusing on what he has the most problems with.  With her practice and ours, I am sure this will one day be a distant memory for us.