Goals

Over the last couple of weeks, Henry’s therapist Melissa and I have been working to put together a plan of Henry’s goals for the next six months.  I like having a plan to work to – I am a ‘goal’ person anyway, so it suits me well to have things to aim for with Henry.

Some of the things we will be aiming for Henry are (with Melissa’s explanation of why it is important in brackets):

• Audition: Understands the meaning associated with environmental sounds.  (This will form the basis of future language development);
• Receptive Language: Understands familiar key words/instructions without gestures such as ‘not, ‘stop’, ‘come here’ and ‘ta for mummy’ (Responding to these words/instructions means that Henry can detect the word, recognise its meaning and respond appropriately).
• Expressive Language: Attends to familiar songs and responds by vocalising and/or copying rhythm/actions. (Henry is developing his ability to recall previous experiences and should start to connect actions to words.  Also, imitating actions usually precedes a child’s ability to imitate words).
• Social Communication: Demonstrate vocal turn-taking such as vocal play, joining in singing or conversational turn-taking. (This goal focuses on Henry’s interaction and participation skills.  It also helps him understand that sound can be used for different purposes).
• Speech: Begins to copy one or more features of a new word immediately after hearing it, eg. syllable number, vowel sounds, intonation, duration, etc.  (Henry will need to practice using the various features of speech such as pitch, volume and duration.  His speech production will also help us to understand what he is hearing).
• Cognition skills: Uses one object to represent another, eg. pretends block is a car or a phone.  (Using one object to represent another is a concrete substitution which precedes the child’s ability to represent an object with a word which is an abstract substitution).

Melissa put together the plan and has suggested it is reasonable to expect Henry to be able to achieve these things in six months.  I plan to work really hard with Henry and actually my goal is to have him complete all these goals in four months.  Henry, your Mummy has high expectations of you!!!!