Another week in the books

Another week in the life. Lesson of the week: if you give a kid candy, he's going to keep asking for candy every....single....time. Funding their sugar highs is getting pretty expensive, and the problem is - they're pretty addicted. And the withdrawal has been a little tough - a few temper tantrums that elicited some tears and refusal to leave the speech room until they got their fix. Nope, sorry gotta go. I'm the boss.

The kindergarten kiddos are some of the cutest and also most behaviorally challenging - but I'm (almost) always laughing on the inside. This week, I went to retrieve the littles from class and immediately one of them tells me he has something for me in his lunch box....a dime and a penny - 11 cents. Handing it over, "Here this is for you." Oh, thanks! "You can buy at least 2 things with it." Oh, but don't you want it? "No, I have a lot more at my house. I went looking for all the money in my house one day and found so much!"

In that same group, another little is one of my favorites and one of my most unintelligible. During a game of dominoes, he tries to pawn off his pieces to one of the others to get rid of his a little quicker, "I dis bein' tice." Translation: "I'm just being nice" and follows it up with a mischievous laugh knowing he's been caught. Even though you can't understand most of what comes out of his mouth, he's a smart little guy.

This week I had a case conference with a mom who admitted to calling her oldest son "Taco" because she ate tacos all the time when she was pregnant. I see her younger son for speech, and today he reported "Taco's birthday is coming up." Ohhh, of course. Part of me wishes I could enroll Taco in speech for the selfish reason of saying I have a Taco on my caseload. Guess having Taco's little bro will have to suffice.

I have a 10th grader that I'm taking on as my new project. She's a stutterer and has really benefited from a delayed auditory feedback program...basically like listening to yourself with an echo in bad cell phone reception. There are little hearing-aid like devices that have the same function and you could keep in your ear all the time. Only catch....they're $5,000. I'm taking it on as my new project to try to get it funded - Grant Writing 101.

Another week down and a little more learned.

Happy weekend,

Julianne