This is one of my students.  For the sake of this post I'll call him "J".  J is almost 9 years old and doesn't speak.  He makes various sounds and gestures to get what he wants.  On the first day of school last year, J greeted me by biting me on the arm leaving a very nice dental impression.  I spent the rest of the school year learning how to keep him from biting or scratching both me and the other students.  Sometimes you'd know he was in a bad mood and other times he would lash out for no apparant reason.  By the end of the year J and I were great friends :).

J has made incredible progress since then.  He hasn't bitten or scratched anyone. Even when he's been extremely frustrated, J has been able to keep himself under control and not lash out. Instead, he loves to hug and sniff you....don't ask me why, he just does.  This year we are determined to help J communicate better.  Most mornings one of us works one on one with him in order to get him to mimic the sounds we make.  Some examples are the "m", "p", "t", and "e" sounds.  Last week the teacher was able to get him to combine the "e" and "t" sounds to form the word eat.  Immediately after he was able to say it we gave him one of his favorite treats - an oreo cookie.  His eyes lit up and he said the word "eat" again.  He still gestures and makes sounds, but  he has been consistently saying the word "eat" for the past week of so.  This is huge!!!  He even says it without being prompted.  Every time he says it we give him some type of food reward.  We're now working on getting him to consistently say the "m" sound for when he wants milk and the "b" sound for when he wants to use the bathroom.

If you think of it, please pray that God will continue to loosen J's vocal chords, giving him further ability to speak and that He would provide us the ability to teach J other sounds /words as well.  He does have a speech therapist, but she doesn't seem to be helping him much.  I'm not trained in speech therapy at all so I find myself getting frustrated at times with my limited ability to help him.