The Lena Foundation Sent Us Electric Pants
Aiden recently participated in a study of children with Apraxia done by The Lena Foundation. Chrissy responded to their open call through the Apraxia Kids web site. The study involved recording everything that Aiden said for three days. They sent us two pairs of overalls, one in a khaki brown and another in a darker brown. They’re nice pants, well made, and the chest area has a little pocket that holds an electronic MP3 device. It records for sixteen hours, so you just turn it on in the morning and tuck it into the chest pocket.
We had planned a trip to the Shedd Aquarium for that week, since I was on vacation, and the Lena people told Chrissy that we can go and do whatever as long as the device was active. We packed the double stroller for Aiden and Gavin. Aiden had a good time and didn’t take notice of the recording device at all. I was worried that it would not be able to make out what Aiden was saying over the general din of the aquarium (it was crowded that day), but we had gotten prior approval so I guess it was all right.
On the second day, I took Aiden to speech therapy at St. Margaret’s, but I forgot to mention ahead of time that he was being recorded. I had never met that speech therapist before, and I was telling Aiden after the session that she was kinda cute. Purely innocent, I assure you. Then it occurs to me that this was being recorded and I should be more careful of what I say! With my luck, the transcript will come back and Chrissy will read it. Then I would get, “So you have the hots for Aiden’s therapist?” D’oh!
Although we’re not normally being taped, we’ve begun to watch what we say around Aiden anyway. A few weeks ago, I came home late from work and was telling Chrissy that the commute was a “solid pain in my ass.” From behind me, I hear “pain in my ass!” Chrissy looks at me and says, “Was that him?” And I say, “I think it WAS him.” So I ask him, “Aiden, what did you just say?” Aiden pipes right up with “pain in my ass!” So you have to watch what you say to him, since he will repeat everything he hears.
The incentive was that Lena was going to pay us $100 for the three days of recording. “Wow, that’s pretty good! All you have to do is dress up your kid in these overalls and slide the recorder in for three days…” What I didn’t know was that there was a lot of paperwork involved, like twenty pages of questionnaire for each day of recording. It was a pain to complete the huge pile of paperwork. I’d be pretty upset if I had to fill out all of this for free, so it’s good that we were being paid!
Then we returned the paperwork and the three recording devices in the mail (we got to keep the pants). Despite the financial incentive, it’s nice to be able to contribute to a study like this. They will return a report with Aiden’s analysis, but I think that these will be just scattered data like ‘words per hour’ or something like that. It would be interesting to see the completed study, though, and understand what they were looking to find and what the final results were. We’ll keep an eye out for that.
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