Help Me Grow was back yesterday to observe Ellie and specifically a tantrum. Of course the day someone comes in the afternoon, Ellie takes an extra long nap. When I got her up, she was still tired and was calm. No tantrums! It still worked out. The therapist did a lot of singing, not songs, just what ever we were doing. Ellie really responded to it. She even said ish (fish) for the first time. Thats going to be a weird and hard habit to get into. She also reminded us that Ellie is almost 2 and we need to consider the power struggle. We ask Ellie a lot of yes or no questions. Its natural that she would say no all day long just because shes a toddler. The therapist recommended either making a statement like the gear goes up and down rather than can you push the gear down. Or we just sing a gear song. Along the same lines, we need to watch our commands. The more we tell her to say drink, say help etc, the less she's going to want to because of the whole stubborn toddler thing. We are going to work on having the boys ask for something in simple toddler terms like snack mama or help please and see if she'll imitate them (something she does quite a bit of). We are also going to work on saying a word, giving her just a second or two to repeat and if she doesn't, giving her the item with a sign, when appropriate, and saying the word again in a song. We'll get there, but we are taking a very scenic route to do so. I was left confused about one thing. Ellie has a couple 2 word phrases like hi mama or a baby. The therapist said kids usually don't start 2 word phrases until they have a vocabulary of over 50 words. She actually thinks Ellie knows a significant number of words, she just wont say them. She couldn't give an explanation on that one. Not sure if I'm buying that one though!
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