Ollie goes to college

Ollie went to college this summer! He was the youngest participant in a 6 week long Speech Clinic at Ithaca College. They had room for him to go twice a week, and we jumped at the chance to help Ollie work with his new communication device, a DynaVox. So every Monday and Wednesday for a month and a half we drove up to South Hill, and Ollie got to play one-on-one with the speech therapist Tina and her grad student Katrina. How lucky was Ollie to get speech therapists with names that rhyme? He loved that!

Ollie enjoyed going to "college" and had a lot of fun with the activities they prepared for him each week. It was a very positive experience for him. He blew them away with his intelligence and his ability to read. He is held back only by his incredibly limited motor skills which make it too difficult to use the device yet with any accuracy. But we'll keep working on it.

If we can find the time we'll try do do a post on Ollie's communication, and our acquisition of this DynaVox V5 device. Our venture into the world of AAC is just beginning, and all I can say is that I hope the technology hurries up and improves. We're not particularly thrilled with our options for Oliver right now. That said, the DynaVox is a start and a big help in giving him a voice.