Brian Jones8 said:John James5, can you give me the lowdown? How exactly did you guys prep for the baby that year? I’m talking about everything—speech therapists, specialists, any specific supplements?
And what was his working memory like back then?
That gap year was mostly just speech therapy and a ton of homework, but we also played through different scenarios every single day—basically whatever popped into my head. Walking through the park, waiting in line at Target, lounging on the beach, riding the bus or subway... everything was an excuse to count things, analyze stuff, or learn through play.
Analyzing and breaking down words. Spelling, syllable splitting. We’d play games trying to remember as many words as possible starting with a certain sound, or what sound a word ended with. Something like "calodont," but at first, just one sound, not whole syllables. We read words letter by letter, then syllables, then blended them together.
We counted whenever I felt like it. Like folding napkins to put four on the table. Or having her hand me five eggs. Counting how many railroad tracks were under the crosswalk. Then there was the whole more vs. less thing—like, if she had 5 pieces of candy and I had 3, who has more? Or if she has 3 candies and gives 1 to a friend, how many are left? If she has 3 and a friend gives her 1, how many does she have now? Using fingers. Using candy. Anything. That’s even how we learned the < and > symbols through games (she remembered that the bigger side is where the sign "opens up") and she never messed those up once in first grade.
She worked through preschool workbooks I picked up at newsstands and bookstores—different quality levels 😁, various types of exercises; I bought a few different ones. Every single day, if she couldn't do more, we did at least one task. I also printed out exercises from the web (I see there are even new ones here now). We used them for concentration, fine motor skills, spatial orientation, understanding quantities, etc. On the recommendation of our speech therapist, Eve, I got her software called "World of Letters," which she did on the computer and absolutely loved. We played "what's the opposite" (night-day, deep-shallow, high-low, young-old...) while walking. She’d retell stories I read to her, and we’d talk about them. She wrote short texts, like birthday cards for friends, drawing them herself, and generally did a lot of drawing and coloring, focusing on being precise.
I think for people asking for a gap year, all this sounds trivial or easy because their kids just "got it" or picked it up on the fly. But our kid had developmental delays, actual issues with comprehension, short attention span, motor restlessness, etc., and nothing happened just by accident or without constant stimulation and repetition. And if you're wondering why we didn't do this sooner, the answer is—we did. We tried, but it didn't work. She'd refuse. Or if she wasn't refusing, she'd just look at me and simply wouldn't understand. Later on, she actually became more prepared and interested than average kids. Even with the speech therapy checkups and the exercises her two therapists recommended in the years prior, it wasn't a lack of effort; she just couldn't grasp those basic concepts. I have another child who has always been a quick learner and picks things up easily "on the go," so I see the difference firsthand.
As for supplements, I bought So this fish oil, my pediatrician suggested it, but man, getting her to swallow it was a total nightmare. Apparently, they market it as having a strawberry flavor, but that’s a load of crap.
