Beer?!?

I dedicate today's post to my little friend, Brian. Brian's parents are friends of mine, and I started doing speech therapy with Brian late in August 2008. It has been a privilege to get to know Brian during his first year and now past his second birthday. He is one of the few children I've worked with who attempted to say my name, "Melinda" which came out as "Minda" when Brian said it. I think it's the best nickname ever. To impress me further, the next week he came out with my last name, "Boring", using a good "r" and everything! His parents were great at following through with all the strategies and suggestions I offered them. Brian has made steady gains in his language skills and now frequently imitates words and short phrases that he hears adults using. Imagine my surprise when we met in the community for a therapy session and Brian took one look at my bottle of Diet Pepsi and pointed to it while loudly announcing, "Beer!" It was one of his new words for that week, and in typical fashion he was over-generalizing it to every drink he saw. His mom and I shared a good laugh over the fact that I couldn't persuade Brian to say "pop" and his insistence on calling it "beer". Incidentally, I don't even like beer, so the accusation was even more amusing. I saw Brian again yesterday, and administered a standardized test that confirmed my impression that his language skills have reached an age-appropriate level. His mom informed me that thanks to a news story and the adult discussion following it, Brian has added the word "alcohol" to his vocabulary. I'm proud of Brian and his family for how quickly he progressed in his skills and he can now be discharged from speech therapy. He'll never remember our speech therapy work together. But Brian, I'll never forget you! Super job, buddy, and have a cold one! Milk, that is!