Kaufman Apraxia Seminar

I had a great day on Friday. I got up at 4 am and drove up to Fort Wayne for the Kaufman Apraxia Seminar. It was great. It did get started a little late due to technical problems, so the end was a little rushed. But I learned a lot about apraxia and dysarthria, and enjoyed learning about the Kaufman method. She used videos of clients and therapy quite a bit, and I loved seeing the principles in action. She had a video of a five year old boy with severe apraxia (he spoke mostly in vowel sounds, hardly any consonant-vowel combinations), and then a video of him at 18, sounding perfectly normal. I was thinking later that it was kind of like being in one of those evangelical meetings where people are instantly healed, and you want to cry and applaud and praise the Lord! Seriously.

I loved Nancy Kaufman. She was such an entertaining speaker and very personable. She invited all the parents of children with apraxia who were attending the conference to join her for lunch, and she spoke with each parent about their child and offered her insights. I will say that the Kaufman method is a tad more behaviorally oriented than I had thought, but as I watched the videos, I thought she did an excellent job of incorporating expressive language opportunities into therapy from the very beginning. She also had some great things to say about teaching children with autism and apraxia.

Boo stayed with Heather for the day. Heather said she was shy for the first part of the day, but had warmed up a lot by the afternoon. It's good for her to be with her boy cousins. We got takeout from India Palace (I think is what it is called) and it was so good. Boo ate a little of the curry dishes, but she LOVED the bread and plum sauce.