I still remember the day he came. Department has already informed me regarding the new case that has been assigned. I was expecting a cute smiling face of the little chap, suddenly; the door was opened with huge cry. The little chap was yelling like anything, from the case file I got that he was diagnosed as Delayed Speech and Language skills. His mother was very supportive and enthusiastic. On further interwing sessions, I got to know his strengths. He was a non-verbal child with reduced comprehension of lexicals. The child lacked pointing and even joint attention. His language skills of reception and expression were of 2-3 months of age. The initial session was of rapport building. Slowly, even he was getting adapted to the sessions. The goal selected for him was to improve pointing skills, identification of lexicals and joint attention. The only interest which he had was the fan. So the pointing skills were initiated from fan. Slowly he started to point to fan and then to parents and himself. After few sessions, he started to identify the lexicals of his interest which was elephant and ice-cream. Later he achieved the verbal responses. By the time he developed joint attention; which was again with fan. During the initial sessions, parallel talk was used for the better responses. After the initiation of parallel talk, he started naming each lexical. It was quite sudden that he uttered his first word of /amma/. Slowly slowly he learned new words and his vocabulary got increased day by day. Now he has achieved age adequate speech and language skills.
Rini Elsa Jacob
Speech Language Pathologist