Saturday, March 7, 2009

My Name is What? ....My Name is What?

So Mateo's expressive language is booming, but receptively he's falling behind. He can imitate almost any word or short phrase, but he doesn't answer questions very well, even easy ones that he should know. We've been trying to teach him to answer when someone asks his name. So far, we've had a slew of ridiculous responses. Some garbled sounds, sometimes he just says "no", and sometimes he makes up words. But here are the usual answers he gives us.

"Mateo, what's your name?" (as if that isn't a dead giveaway)

"Bobby." (Don't ask)

Try again.

"Mateo, what's your name?"

"Applejuice."

Later.

"Mateo, how old are you?"

"Nnnnnnnooooooo.....!!!!"

Try again.

"Mateo, how old are you?"

"Applejuice."



Sigh. Any suggestions? We're meeting next week with the special ed coordinator for his transition to preschool and we've already made a....how shall I say...."interesting" impression on this woman once. See this post for the details. And then this one for the follow up story. Although Mateo is not going to that preschool (for reasons in the posts linked above), we are trying to get speech services from them. So I suppose it is in our favor that he doesn't know his name. All the more reason to give him free speech therapy, right?

Oh, but did I mention, he can say, "Oh crap!" clear as a bell. Isn't that wonderful? Well, I suppose it could be worse.

3 comments:

Rachel said...

We have been working with Elizabeth to teach her how to answer the name question.
Each time we asked the question, we were met with silence. Finally my husband and I started asking each other "What's your name?" when Elizabeth was paying attention. We would answer properly with either "Mommy" or "Dadddy". After a while she started answering correctly with "My name is Lizabeth".
Don't worry, it will come to him sooner or later.

Anonymous said...

Well, I have no suggestions... We've also been dealing with some weird uppity pre-school and education issues. We're not sure how best to help our oldest, not sure how seriously to take those experienced expert educators who are "concerned" about our son not reading yet, among other things...

I have been lurking here for a few weeks and wanted to say hi. Your non-teaching teaching method sounds fabulous to me!

Heather {naturally crafted mama} said...

hehe, it always amazes me how quickly kids pick up on the phrases they SHOULDN'T be saying. Maybe you should try some reverse workings with him, every time you go to say "oh crap" or some other cuss phrase that you know he'll eventually pick up, say "my name is mateo!"

ok i'm totally joking :) Good luck!