Fun With Phonics

Corinne's speech therapist has a bunch of flash cards depicting a word and a picture that symbolizes the word (for example a ghost for "boo"). Some of the words are a little bit obscure, as they are aimed more at teaching the child a certain sound combination than at the vocabulary itself. Because Corinne is so visual and so bright, I usually try to give her an explanation of what the thing is, and how it relates to her, whenever possible (although I was hard pressed to make "Abe", as in the president, meaningful to her). She is surprisingly good at remembering these explanations and then using the word later on in a completely appropriate context (like when she said "horsie 'nipped' me", or when she yells "Fussy baby" at crying children).

So this week one of the words was "naughty", and the picture was of a puppy chewing on a shoe. Corinne is certainly familiar (and quite delighted) with this word and its meaning, so she spent some extra time studying it thoughtfully. She then said "that doggie maybe ate all his dog food and then ate the shoe". We praised this original thought and then went on with the cards. A few minutes later we came to "noisy", which was represented by a man with a jackhammer. For some reason the man's head was not included in the picture, probably to not detract from the real focus, the noise. Once again Corinne studied the picture for a long time before concluding that "maybe that naughty doggie ate that dadda's head".

Awesome. That girl is 100% her mother's (and father's) daughter.

And then there was today's speech therapy session. The word was "sucker" and the pictorial representation for this rather humorous word was something to this effect:

Corinne got very excited and I expected her to say that she wanted that sucker or that we see those type of suckers at the candy store at "Dumma's beach home". Instead she said that she has a "boo-die sucker" upstairs in her room.

The therapist said, "oh, you have a birthday sucker?" and Corinne adamantly said no to this. She kept repeating "boo-die sucker". A game of 20 questions ensued. "You have something round like this?" ; "you have a birdie?"; "can you go get it and show us?". No, no and no. She began to cry with frustration so we quickly diverted her attention to something else. After the session I asked her about it again, the curiosity killing me at this point, and this time had her take me upstairs to show me. She went straight for her room, looked around for a minute, and then pulled open her dresser drawer but couldn't find what she was looking for. She then said "it's on the door" and "it's light blue". Suddenly I knew. I opened her closet door and retrieved from the bag with all her medicines and supplies, this item:

Her face lit up with excitement and relief that the connection was finally made. A boogie sucker. Jeeze momma, get with the program.