October is AAC Awareness Month! All this week I am attending a live webinar series on SpeechPathology.com called: 2016 Nancy McKinley Lecture Series: Topics in AAC. Here is my summary of Day 1.
AAC, AAC Awareness Month | in AAC Meet Emily. Emily is one of four "facial expression empathy dolls" available from EmotiPlush Inc. On their website, EmotiPlush dolls are described as: "a revolutionary way of playing with dolls - change the toy's features to reflect the emotions you want it to express!"
"One of the things I love to do is play roller derby. It's one of my favorite sports. Another thing about me is that I go to speech therapy. And today I would like to tell you what I do at speech therapy."
"I still have a list on my phone of my son's words as of September 2013 when he was 2 years old. We had been working with a speech therapist for 6 months and were laboring away at building his basic vocab and the elusive 'two-word phrases' most kids his age seemed to come to easily. Ball, book, more, mama, eyes, bird, baby..."
"Part of me felt nervous that my child would be labeled, or that I would be told something was “wrong” with her. Instead, I found a kind, knowledgeable person who would partner with us to teach and help Maeve, to support her in the journey from silence to speech."