Importance of Imagination

Imagination is so important in children.  What do you do when your little guy whose speech/language quality can barely be understood starts using their imagination? 

When Gabriel was three years old he struggled at nighttime because of the monster in the closet.  Every night after I read him his story, sang him a song and said our prayers I would turn off the light and close the door till only an inch of light shown through.  Without fail 5 minutes later he would be calling out to us and my husband would have to chase the monsters out of the closet.  Months later we found the culprit who was scaring him each night.  The cat! 
With Lucas everything is different.  Most of his words that we understand are his "core" words or are said in context of the moment.  Many times during the day we play a guessing game of what he just said.  When imaginary plays comes into the conversation we really need to be on top of our game.  Like when he grabs his NY Rangers Truck and calls it "Mats" or in the morning he wants a banana for breakfast and says night night as I am peeling it.  It takes a while for us to register that he is using his imagination and then to "go along" with what he is saying.  "Mats" his NY Rangers truck turned out to be Mack from the movie Cars.  I am still trying to figure out what peeling the banana has to do with night night. 

I have found that it is so easy to get caught up in the stress of Lucas' speech/language issues.  An important part of letting go of that stress is having fun with each new sound, word approximation, and experience.  These early years go by so fast in the scope of life but when you compile therapists, IEP meetings, evaluations, and day to day experiences it is so easy to feel like each week is long and short at the same time.  Long because you have to get through the hectic daily schedules and short because you never seem to have enough hours get everything accomplished.  Fitting in quality play time can be a challenge when you have so much to accomplish in a day.  That is why I like being hand's on with his therapy.  If I know exactly how to help him I can include those techniques into our play time! 

Knowing how to incorporate therapy into such things like playing with playdoh, lego's, trains, and reading.  I have learned so much from our EI SLP and I will continue to learn with his new teacher and therapist.  Learning to effectively communicate is so important but it is meaningless if it does not carry over into every day life.  If I never played Cars with him I would not have understood that "Mats" was really Mack from the movie.  One of his favorite Thomas the Train characters is Diesel 10, when learning to call him by his name this was beyond his ability so he used his hand to imitate the claw on top and would then say "en" (ten).  Working and playing with him he now attempts to say Diesel 10 and his approximations are slowly coming closer to a stranger understanding him if they know what Diesel 10 is.  That is huge progress that is due to my ability to work with him at home.