Listening

You know, I really hate titling blog posts. I also hate subjecting emails. Anyway...

Laynie was just watching the BBC Pride and Prejudice, and she turned to me to ask, "Do these people have a British accent? I'm really hearing the stops." (Yes, I have nerdified her with SLP vocabulary.) What nice listening skills!

On Christmas Eve afternoon, Laynie and I sat down at the computer to make a nice Christmas playlist that she would enjoy, since she wasn't into mine. As she accepted and rejected hundreds of tracks, I noticed some patterns. Likes: country men, David Archuleta, Sarah McLachlan, Andrea Bocelli, some Ella Fitzgerald, Christian rock/pop. Dislikes: sopranos, country women, choirs (because the tracks were hard for her to hear--I wonder if iTunes has auto gain control). She observed that many of the songs had the same name; for example, I have seven different versions of Away in a Manger. She noticed that they all had different takes on the same song, that they didn't sound alike. But she thought that people should be more creative and make up new Christmas songs instead of just doing the classics over and over.

I will be curious if her tastes are the same when the artists are performing their own (non-holiday) songs.

Today we were doing some listening therapy, working on picking one word out of a group of four words that are similar in some way. It was funny that Laynie was able to get more common words (walk, but, long) easier than less common words (roam, hoof, mace). You might think, well duh, of course more common words would be easier. Um, only if she's learning incidentally--learning them by overhearing them. The groups of words are equally difficult as far as the differences between the words, but some of the words must have been more familiar. So... I guess she's learning just by listening to the world. Good thing, since we hardly ever do therapy anymore.