WAGR Wednesday~Mirror, Mirror: Is it Vanity or Speech Therapy?

Since Evie was a toddler, mirrors have been our saving grace. 

 

Whenever I wanted to go shopping, I could just find a mirror for Evie to dance in front of, and I could take my time looking through clothes racks.  If we were at a grocery store, Evie would find her reflection in the tiny mirrored strips that lined some of the shelves; or the mirrored back drop in the produce sections.  I remember one holiday season walking through the mall and Evie would stop at each glass storefront and say, “Hi, how are you?” and wave to her reflection in the glass.

I love the doctor’s waiting rooms that have mirrors for the kids to play in.  Some of them are the convex or concave mirrors which give a fun-house effect.  Evie doesn’t care what kind of mirror it is, as long as she can chicken-dance and sing and talk to herself, she is a happy girl.

In the mirror, mirror on the wall, our children are the fairest of them all.

There’s definitely a consistent theme of our kids with WAGR loving mirrors and seeing themselves in mirrors.  Since that is the case, I say, why not use it to our advantage?

There’s a popular speech therapy method of using mirrors to provide visual feedback to patients as they rehearse the muscle sequencing required to produce the sounds necessary in speech.  If you type in “speech therapy mirrors,” to a search engine, you will find a wide variety of mirrors that are for sale which can assist in providing patients such feedback.  Personally, I’d start with a regular mirror.  Why pay a therapeutic price for something that may or may not work?  

 
I was particularly interested in an app that I found called VAST Autism 1- Core which is $4.99 in the Apple App Store.  I hadn't heard of it until searching specifically for "research speech therapy mirrors". Here is the article I found about VAST Autism 1-Core. 

I have Evie's IEP meeting tomorrow, so I think I'll bring this up at the meeting and see if there is any feedback from her speech therapist concerning this app in particular.  The company that created the VAST Autism 1-Core app also markets a few other speech therapy apps, and in other languages like Spanish and Portuguese. 

I'm quite fascinated with this idea right now.  You can also learn more about the company and their products by visiting speakinmotion.com. 

Another website which I encountered when researching for this particular post was proactivespeechtherapy.com .  There's a large volume of information on speech therapy methods and apps, but there's also information on a variety of other worthy apps.  I happened to see that they recommend one that I just recently put on Evie's iPad called Toca Doctor.  She loves zapping all the germs!!!  (What does this have to do with speech or mirrors?  Nothing, but it's just a fun connection. *insert smiley emojicon*).

So, I'm really glad to have Evie's IEP coming up tomorrow.  I can get some pretty instant feedback on these things I just discovered.  I'll be sure to add an "update" to this post when I have more to add about if and how this app or any other speech app helps with Evie's apraxia or stuttering.

In the meantime, encourage that "mirror-play"!  It seems to be an obsession that could be beneficial in the long run!