William's First Sentence Strip

For over a month now William's teacher, tutor, and speech therapist have all been trying to get him to request things using the phrase, "I want..." They were having no success.

So last weekend I decided to go hard core and not let William have anything without requesting it with the sentence. We had two hours of frustration on Saturday morning and still no breakfast when I got a brain storm, grabbed an envelope off the counter, and drew William's first sentence strip. It was an instant success. He pointed to each word and said them clearly and emphatically, "I want juice!" We all cheered.

The rest of the weekend he kept trying out different endings, "I want cheerios," "I want milk," "I want cake." You could see his brain processing the possibilities.

It's been a fascinating picture of William's language disorder. After a full week of constant practice, he still cannot say the sentence without the paper. What is it about those two syllables that's so hard?

Up until now all William's phrases were rote ones he learned as single units: "Let's go," "Come on, guys," "What's going on?" "You ok?" His brain was not processing them as subject and verb that could be changed up or switched around.

But requiring him to put a changing object at the end of "I want..." forced his brain to think of the words separately as subject, verb, object. And for some reason his brain can't hold onto those separate units and string them together. But if he has a visual reminder that allows him to process one word at a time, he can do it.

The most amazing part is that William seems to know this. Later in the week when Eric tried to get him to say, "I want..." on his own, William went over, found the paper, pointed, and said it.

This is a significant milestone for William's language development. William's teacher wisely suggested that we wait awhile before introducing any other sentence strips. But we have opened the door to that whole world, which is very exciting.