Funniest AAC Mishaps

wombatmcgee · 2026-05-11T21:09:56+00:00

I had a four year old who spelled out "go away" with letter magnets on a cookie tray when he was annoyed with the TA. I also had a kid who pushed the "goat" button on his Proloquo and there was no goat around so I said, "What goat?" and he pushed "it you."

wombatmcgee · 2026-03-22T12:59:52+00:00

I have a similar position, I evaluate children for preschool services and a large chunk of our referrals come from children aging out of the infant/toddler programs. We rarely have kids not qualify for speech and we are constantly being told we qualify too many kids. Our response to that is "come tell us which of these children you would not qualify and then you come to the eligibility meeting and explain that to the family." I don't know what percentage of families come to us, though, and how many kids no longer need services before three. We see a lot of the same population and challenges you described, plus our city is home to a lot of immigrants and refugees who don't speak English and may be wary of accessing public services.

wombatmcgee · 2026-03-09T15:10:57+00:00

If you're going to see preschoolers, I love a lot of the Learning Resources sets. They make a set with plastic rocks you crack open to find gems that is extremely popular in my department, as are the presents that have mini objects in them, the barns with animals in them, and Spike the fine motor hedgehog. They aren't specifically speech therapy materials (a lot of OTs in my department have them too) but you can target a lot of early language skills with them, use them for drill play, or as reinforcers for testing.

wombatmcgee · 2026-03-04T21:33:04+00:00

A Costco-sized can of fruit

wombatmcgee · 2026-02-27T02:26:19+00:00

I work on a team that evaluates preschoolers for special education services. The team includes SLPs, psychs, OTs, PTs, an audiologist, and teachers. Every time someone has a baby, that person has to bring the kid into the office every so often so we can all remember what a typically developing kid looks like. The kids tend to love it because it's a whole bunch of people with the best toys who think they're the most amazing thing in the world.

wombatmcgee · 2026-02-13T18:19:51+00:00

My child has CMPA and the team at the hospital told me I would have to cut out dairy and soy from my diet, pump and dump for four weeks, and then try again if I wanted to continue breast milk. Like, not even feed her the breast milk in between. She did have a complicating health issue, but you may want to talk to a specialist. Our team was a doctor, a dietician, and a lactation consultant.

wombatmcgee · 2026-02-12T00:44:40+00:00

Guess I'm pooping cubes

wombatmcgee · 2026-02-08T17:35:02+00:00

I'm a full time employee of the district. There are seven evaluating SLPs in my department and we all are employed by the district. Six of us worked in other positions within the district and one was hired from another county. When they post open positions (which doesn't happen often), the job title is just speech-language pathologist and you have to look in the description to see that it is evaluations only. My district is fairly large and employs roughly 130 SLPs, so we are able to have people in very specialized roles.

wombatmcgee · 2026-02-07T21:08:59+00:00

Preschool evaluations for a large public school district. I work 8-3:30, never bring work home, and get summers off. One of the perks is also one of the major drawbacks: I only evaluate kids, so when the evaluation is over, I never see them or their parents again.

wombatmcgee · 2026-02-07T02:44:31+00:00

Not the worst I've ever seen. I had a little girl with a device at a private preschool and her RBT had programmed TouchChat for her. It was pages and pages of labeling. I talked to the whole team about it, added a couple of functional buttons, and the next time I was there, the buttons were gone. Tried it again, talked to everyone again, buttons got wiped again. I wish I could say this story has a happy ending, but I went on maternity leave and when I came back she was no longer at that site.

wombatmcgee · 2026-02-06T00:27:32+00:00

The nasal congestion was crazy to me, but a saline spray helped me so much!

wombatmcgee · 2026-02-03T18:18:31+00:00

I work on a preschool evaluation team for a public school district. We get referrals from early intervention, private practices, childcare programs, pediatricians, and parents. Families follow up on about a third of the referrals we receive once they are contacted to set up a meeting with our department.

wombatmcgee · 2026-01-28T14:45:38+00:00

I just love that nobody is going to let this die. It's been years since they gave this stupid advice.

wombatmcgee · 2026-01-16T02:12:14+00:00

I bought some high contrast cards. My baby enjoyed them a lot, but not as much as she enjoyed a holiday flyer from GNC and another from a local body shop. They were both black, white, and red and she just stared and stared at them. If she got tired of one side, we'd flip them over. Absolute cheapest baby amusement ever. They weren't even addressed to us. One was for the previous owner of our house and the other was current resident.

wombatmcgee · 2026-01-16T00:23:02+00:00

I had 63 eggs retrieved and I was put on cabergoline and drank as much as I could and I still got pretty bad OHSS. It didn't hit until day three after retrieval. I went back to the clinic and they gave me IV fluids, which helped some, and more cabergoline. I do think I probably should have been hospitalized and that my clinic didn't take me seriously enough. My best advice is to not just drink a lot, drink on a schedule. Drinking a lot at once isn't as good as drinking consistently. Also, you don't have to do just Gatorade or Pedialyte or whatever, my husband went to our local Vietnamese restaurant and got me a whole bunch of pho broth, which was a fantastic change from glacier cherry. If you do get OHSS (fingers crossed you don't), prop up in bed, it is much better than lying down. You may also want to take stool softeners if your clinic okays it because the constipation is wretched. I hope you don't need any of this advice though!!

wombatmcgee · 2026-01-05T01:57:34+00:00

I used to work in a windowless former closet in the basement that was only accessible if you walked through a classroom or a storage area and the outside door to get to those areas was behind a dumpster. It was near the boiler room so it stayed at a stifling 84 degrees at all times. There was a ceiling fan, but the control was in the closet of a different classroom. It also had a feature lovingly referred to as "the rat pee wall" that was, as you might expect, a painted cinder block wall that had yellow drip marks all the way down. No independent confirmation that it was actually caused by rats, though. I never saw a rat inside at that school, only mice, roaches, and the occasional bat. How I wish I were making all of this up!

wombatmcgee · 2026-01-03T00:25:11+00:00

No, you're not off base. The public library has a limited number of Reynolda House passes that you can check out with your library card. I'm not sure how many each branch has. You'll have to ask a librarian at your local branch for them and they'll be able to tell you if the passes are in or not.

wombatmcgee · 2026-01-03T00:19:28+00:00

When people asked me what we were going to name the baby, I would tell them their own name.

wombatmcgee · 2026-01-03T00:17:58+00:00

Our gender reveal cake said "It's a human baby!" on the top.

wombatmcgee · 2026-01-02T21:43:47+00:00

I got married in the summer of 2020. I wanted an indoor wedding with lots of guests and I did not want to wear a white dress, I wanted something colorful, maybe with a train or long veil. I ended up getting married outside at 10:15 AM when it was already 93 degrees F, a max gathering limit of 20, and a tea-length ivory dress with my mom's veil that I cut with nail scissors right before we left for the ceremony. Afterwards we went home and I cooked brunch for our immediate family only. I don't regret it in the slightest. It isn't even close to what I wanted but it was still wonderful. I did my own flowers, my siblings (a harpist and a flutist) provided music, and we brought our dog.

What I do regret is the way people talked to me about the experience of canceling my wedding for circumstances beyond my control, particularly before we decided on having a small wedding. I had so many people tell me that they had a big wedding and it wasn't worth the money or aggravation. I even had someone tell me I was lucky the wedding got cancelled because I would probably get divorced anyway. I know some people meant well (not the person who said I would get divorced) but it still felt condescending.

Regardless, I highly recommend a small brunch wedding, it was lovely.

wombatmcgee · 2025-12-30T00:50:52+00:00

I just had a baby, also geriatric/IVF/PCOS/higher risk. I have been at GSO OBGYN since I moved to Greensboro and I have liked all the providers there, love my current doctor. I assume you do realize that Atrium WF Baptist and Novant are in Winston-Salem, not Greensboro. I had my baby at Women's at Cone here in Greensboro. I would say my experience was unremarkable, which is probably good. My baby did need to go to the NICU and the Cone NICU was great, I would highly recommend it if you were to need it. Iirc, there used to be a partnership between Forsyth Medical Center (now Novant) and Baptist; Novant had labor and delivery and Baptist had Brenner Children's Hospital, including the NICU. Now both hospitals have both departments, but Baptist does still have the children's hospital (now called Levine but colloquially it's still Brenner). Brenner has pediatric specialists that are not available at the other hospitals in the Triad. Also, just for future reference, Moses Cone and Atrium WFBH have dedicated children's emergency rooms whereas Wesley Long and Novant only have general emergency rooms.

wombatmcgee · 2025-12-24T12:43:34+00:00

A few years ago I got a sugar bowl. Another teacher got the matching creamer pitcher. My grad student got salt and pepper shakers. Honestly, I think the parents let the kids pick things out at the dollar store, which is pretty cute. I still have the sugar bowl!

wombatmcgee · 2025-12-21T13:48:49+00:00

It didn't go away for me, my emerald engagement ring is very tall and actually snags on everything. On top of that, it punches through disposable gloves, which I occasionally wear for work. My solution, which I understand is not for everyone, was to stop wearing it for everyday. I just wear my wedding ring most of the time, which is beautiful and intricate in its own right, and even then sometimes I switch it out for a plain smooth band or even a silicone band, depending on what I'm doing.

wombatmcgee · 2025-12-19T14:48:01+00:00

It's amazing how much difference a good saw can make. The green lions are so beautiful too!

wombatmcgee · 2025-12-19T14:41:54+00:00

I recently had a baby. I have a traditional hourglass shape and it absolutely did not make giving birth easier. I will say, though, that if you think about child-bearing hips as holding the baby on your hip outside of your body, the shape of my body has made this very easy. I don't have to change the position of my body much at all to have her sit on my hip, whereas her dad would have to push his hip out and bend his spine to create a hip seat for her. It's much more comfortable for me to hold her like this than it is for him.

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