Oral Motor Therapy

As I mentioned in an earlier post, we recently went to San Antonio and New Braunfels. The New Braunfels portion of our trip was to meet with a speech and language pathologist there. At DSACO's annual conference in April, we met one of the speakers. Renee Roy-Hill is a SLP and a course lecturer for Talk Tools Therapy. She did a presentation at the conference for parents of kids ages 0-3 years, and we were so impressed. We left the conference thinking that we had to get Caleb set up with a speech pathologist. After several unsuccessful attempts at trying to get him in with a therapist at a clinic in OKC, we decided to talk to Renee. She said that she could evaluate Caleb and then write a six-month program for us to carry out at home. We set up a two-hour consult for one afternoon in early July and also scheduled a one-hour therapy session for the next day.

A couple weeks before we went to San Antonio, the local therapy clinic called to schedule a speech evaluation. After weeks of calling and two referrals from the pediatrician, they finally got around to calling us! We went to the evaluation and were pleased with the SLP. We told her about our plans to meet with Renee and that we were going to follow her therapy program. The SLP seemed excited about what we were doing and said that she fully supported our decision and would like to work with us to carry out Renee's program... pending insurance approval, of course!

So fast forward to early July and our first session with Renee. She introduced us to several of the Talk Tooks therapy approaches, including drinking from a straw cup rather than a sippy cup. It turns out Caleb is already a pro at sucking through a straw, but he still needs some work on swallowing all of the liquid he sucks. We also learned how to help him drink from a specially designed open cup. Drinking from the cup will help him learn how to swallow more volume at once. Renee taught us some different ways to feed him purees and soft solids. She also showed us some facial stretches and some tools/toys that will help him build strength and good form. I wish I could go into all that we covered, but it was two hours worth of very detailed info!

The next day we returned to her clinic for a one hour session where we were able to ask questions and get a little extra practice. She recorded both sessions and sent the DVDs to us a few days ago. She will send the program soon.

We're still waiting to see if insurance will approve us to do speech therapy with the local therapist. Whether that happens or not, we're busy practicing all the techniques Renee taught us. I can't wait to get Caleb's program from her and really get started with it!

If you want to learn more about Talk Tools, check out their website. Most of the cups, spoons, and tools we use are available for purchase there.