Yay! So happy for you!!! )

Thanks Skippy.  I'll try those although he really is unique, bless.  Yes he is the same at Preschool.  They say that if an adult didn't go over and engage him he would play by himself the whole session.  Speech therapy said I had to involve him in daily life, seriously?  Here are some excerpts from today:
Me: Anthony, put these (clothes) in your room. (runs off)
Come here (nothing).  Come here Ants.  (nothing) COME HERE!!!! OK, now take these and put - them - in - your - room.  Drops them on floor on the landing.  We do the come here rigmarole again.  He drops them in the basket.  And in the basket again.  OK, that's good, but IN - Your - Room !!.  I put them in his room while he runs round, not seeming to pay attention. 

I give him more clothes.  He does near enough the same thing again.  It's exhausting.  Am I an evil mummy not to involve him?

Yesterday we also went to a group for 3-4 year olds.  The baby "played" with a 19 month old.  They stroked each other's faces for a while and he also "listened" to teh story for short periods, looking straight at the lady reading.  Meanwhile his big brother was playing with the window, chewing foam letters and investigating the radiator.

He has actually had an ok day today, with lots of what I call "joined up thinking".  Otherwise, I may not have mentioned that another symptom is that he answers questions with a random answer or a blank.  Amazingly, we were watching the second YBCR dvd which asked "what's your favourite book?" and he said a book title!!!!

I spoke to preschool who agreed that it's laughable for Speech Therapy to suggest Pretend Play or Turn Taking (early life skills he has missed out on) when there are so many other issues.  They do see how features of receptive language disorder and some of the processing disorder do fit but not all.  So he will be seen by a specialist paediatrician some time soon.... Keep the ideas coming.  Thanks for your input so far )

That's great thanks.  Preschool have their own speech therapist so I shall ask her tomorrow.  Hoping he's just a difficult customer.... when I shout "chocolate", he processes that very well! :P But thanks because this does make sense for me.   

Hello eveyrone,

Sorry if I have asked before, I'm such a sieve-head, but I would just like any views on how to help DS1 who had a difficult start (major surgery which hindered physical development and then poor eyesight, multilingual home....)

He "speaks" in that he will tell you that he "want X rhyme or Y rhyme", "want juice", "want cornflakes" (when you present him with weetabix) but he doesn't "communicate".  If you ask him a question, any question, he says "sewing machine / Three Blind Mice / Uncle Andy" or any other random answer.  When I went to pick him up from preschool the other day, he didn't say "Hello Mummy", even though he probably could, but "Lulu and Andy" (my sister and brother in law).  We hardly see them and they have certainly never picked him up from preschool so it's extremely random.   If you ask "Do you want milk or water?"  he mirrors back "milk or water" like he hasn't understood it's a choice.  He only says the things he likes.  If he has no interest, he may well know it but won't express it, as we have discovered.

Just wondering if anyone else has come across this? Speech therapy say to promote turn-taking (because conversation involves taking turns) and pretend play.  I'm not impressed.  It's hard work doing pretend play with someone who doesn't speak and doesn't even sit still to watch (but is taking stuff in....).  They have to say something, I suppose, to justify their existence. 

I've noticed that after reading him a lot of books (I agree with that article posted on here which says children thrive on 30,000 words), he comes out with some communication
Me;Why aren't you eating your cornflakes?
Him: (long pause.... very quietly) Want houmous
but it still looks like a very long road...
Just hoping for any tips. 
Many thanks.

Thanks for your replies everyone.  Very interesting

Hi,

I have a World Flags poster up in the kitchen.  Not pushing it or anything but my son keeps asking me what they are.  Also have a world map poster up on the kitchen door and started showing him the countries where various family members live.  Then he started pointing at the tiger etc, and I would say, that's a tiger, in China.  That's the Great Wall / a kangaroo / Sydney Opera House etc.

Don't know where you are based (I'm in the UK) but I like the wooden bigjigs puzzle for countries of Europe and UK counties and the Geopuzzle range for other continents.
Good luck
A

That was the one.  Wonderful, thanks :o)

Thanks Daddude! (While I'm at it, thank you so much, on behalf of translators everywhere, for your greatest work - I just love it for getting a snapshot of a new concept).

DS1 is starting to say the word at the same time or before the voiceover.  He's even starting to do the actions (touch your nose etc) and says the children's names randomly, throughout the day, as he does with lots of things. (Steriliser, for example).  The problem before was processing.  Preschool reported that they would tell the children to fetch a pig from the farm scene and the others would do it and go "OINK OINK" but our lad would stare at the sky or whatever for ten minutes then go "pig" ages later when everyone else had moved on LOL.  (Secretly I think preschool bores him and he would rather be at college studying engineering.  He won't tell me his ears hurt or whether he wants yoghurt but knows a lot of technical words such as thermostat, thermometer, cable, charger and shows a particular interest in vents and fans (don't even know if that's the right word - air conditioning units on the outside of buildings?) and drags me round the outside of the mall each time to examine them all)!  We still have the problem that he won't answer questions but maybe after another five months of YBCR......

He's still a little slow and often says the word when shot has moved to the next scene but this seems to be a big improvement.   I know people here, especially yourself, have kids who really are doing fantastically and congratulations to all of you, but I just wanted to let people know that this worked (at least for us) because it really took a big effort from me to be consistent with it and I found it really dull, so I wanted to let others know that it is worth the effort.  I also recommended it to my neighbour for her autistic nephew so I'm relieved they haven't wasted their money either! 

I would also like to add that he often looks away when the word comes up.  It looked like he wasn't paying attention but maybe they are the ones he knows....other people have said this too with their flashcards etc.

While you're here, Daddude, if you could be so kind as to provide the link for that lovely page of yours, with the classical music and paintings, I would be delighted because I can't find it anywhere.

Many thanks
Have a lovely day

Hello everyone,

Cynic that I am, I wondered if all the Amazon reviews were fake, or if the people on here were relying on some other method but no, I have shown the starter video to my sons, DS1 aged 3yr 2m and DS2, nearly six months, for three weeks now.  Sometimes (not often) I showed it twice a day.  Occasionally I rewound it so they could see the singing again, replaying all the content between song 1 and song 2.  We didn't have the two days off that Dr Titzer recommended.  Ummm. that's about it...  I haven't got a lot of evidence that DS2 can read but he does seem to open his mouth or go for his toes at the appropriate time every now and then. 

I haven't done the flashcards that came with the dvds because some of the words don't seem to be covered in the dvd.  The other night, I just broke Doman's no testing rule and asked DS2 a few which were on his regular flashcards. 

So what else have I done? I bought LR for my 3yo which we used for a few months but he prefers LR Lite.  He has also seen a fair amount of flashcards over the years but certainly not every day, and probably not every week. I'm not a rigorous person so I'm amazed that I have actually been bothered with YBCR and I still think YBCR has taught him the words elephant, baby, sun, dog, cat and four or five others, sorry, can't remember already, Isn't that terrible?  He has also watched a lot of Youtube songs with the lyrics on..... Some of the words are covered pretty extensively on LR but it seems to be YBCR that has brought them out.

I should add that he has a communication "problem" where he doesn't respond to questions and his speech is a year behnd.  We live in the UK and DH speaks Turkish and MIL speaks French to him so he has a lot to process.  So he doesn't really speak but he "reads"! I've heard that pre-speech is the best time to teach reading though.

 He knows the words by sight but has no idea about sounding out... maybe that will somehow fall into place later....?

Looking forward to completing the course!
Keep going, everyone!

Hi, Looks amazing.  Am I the only one who can't download the player?
Thanks for any help.

Looks brilliant, thanks for that

Hi,
I'd just like to confirm what many others have said.  When I was little, I had all the "Mr Men" books.  I swear I couldn't remember any of them.  Just the other day, my son wanted me to read Mr Strong and the story came back to me very quickly indeed. 
Now, I can't remember the story of Little Miss Splendid at all, but the box set has just arrived and I'm confident I will know it when I read the first page....

well it's the only thing which looks fun and appealing for young ones.  As teh periodic table is aimed at much older kids, there aren't any games out there. 

I fancy buying it, but I won't lose any because I'm a total neat freak and will be constantly arranging them to see if there are any missing!

If anyone from here buys one first (ie in the next few weeks) please let me know if you liked it.
All the best,

Hi everyone

I was looking for a fun way to teach my little man the Periodic table and found the whole set of magnets made by a science student on Ebay. He is based in the states, but ships worldwide.

Hope you can see this link

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/160525848806?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1438.l2649

Otherwise, his seller name is mister-wednesday and the title of the item is    
Magnetic Periodic Table of the Elements Science Geek He

All the best,

Amazing! Well done!!! So so happy for you.  That's fantastic )