Sweet Shoppe Designs

Ben has Childhood Apraxia of Speech, so until he was 3 he communicated primarily through sign language. Each photo is labeled with the date and the word he's signing.

Journaling:
We started teaching you to sign when you were 11 months old. You had just started speech therapy after being diagnosed with low muscle tone and a related speech delay. We knew you were likely to be a late talker, and being able to communicate through sign would reduce your frustration and ensure that your language skills developed in an age-appropriate way even though your speech was delayed. The first sign you mastered was "more," and you were signing "more" for food and during games by your first birthday. A month later you
had also mastered done, eat, sleep, up, milk, and bye. We added a couple of new signs every
week, and everyone in the family learned them and used them with you. You weren't dexterous enough to sign them all correctly, but we had no problem understanding your versions.

When you were diagnosed with apraxia in April 2008, we started taking the signing a lot more seriously. There were a few reasons for that--we realized it might be a few years until you spoke well, and you might even start school with sign as your main form of communication. You need to motor plan in order to sign, so increasing your sign use would help you learn to speak. Our new speech therapist was more fluent in sign than our old one had been, and she signed along as she talked to us, teaching us several new signs each session. We also bought a sign dictionary to learn new signs as we needed them.

Your sign vocabulary increased so much with Cathy's help, and we worked on moving you from
single word signs ("milk" ) to more age-appropriate phrases ("Milk, please" and "Want milk" ). By the time you were three, you knew hundreds of signs, were signing 4-5 word sentences ("Get milk for Ben" and "I see red car there" ) and could sign a few entire songs, like The Wheels on the Bus.

By that point your speech was taking off, and gradually your primary form of communication switched from sign to speech. You're three and a half now, and you hardly ever sign any more.
A couple of times a week I see you sign a word as you say it or add a sign if I don't understand something you've said. I'm so thankful that we were able to sign together when you were unable to communicate with us in any other way. For two years you communicated mainly through sign;
I can't imagine how it would have affected all of us if those two years had been a constant struggle to
understand even your most basic requests.

Credits:
Main Kit: Revolution, Julie Billingsley, SSD
Template (modified): Lots to Say 3, Chrissy W, Elemental Scraps
Worn Overlays: All Worn Out 3 by Penny Springmann at SSD, Cracked and Creased by Meryl Bartho at Digital Scrapbook Place
Chipboard Alpha: Miss Betty, Fee Jardine, SSD
Tags: Labels & Such, Heather Roselli, SSD
Fonts: Marcelle Script, Complete in Him