Adventures in Christmas Programs

And audiologist exams, and vision screenings, and potty training, and....

Let's just say the boy's not been much in a cooperative mood lately.  He's been sick recently, which doesn't help matters, but he's been a royal uncooperative crank in the last month or so.

This is actually good news in some ways. I mean, it's a royal PITA in a lot of ways, but it's good news because he's no longer the passive, "good baby" that he used to be. He doesn't sit in the shopping cart or stroller and watch as the world goes by. He won't stare dully at you when you try to get him to make a choice.

He's decided he should be part of the world and interact with it, and express opinions. That opinion is usually "no." That's very typical for preschoolers. It's the first and easiest opinion to express.

But as I resign myself to caring for his Christmas program meltdown, and get frustrated that he won't wear headphones for a hearing screening or tell the nice clinician what's on the card on the room is full of all sorts of other things to see, I remind myself that this is a positive step. A frustrating and annoying step at times, but a positive step.

In other, somewhat related news, teaching to the test begins early. The preschool teacher and we agreed that we should start teaching him to point at specific objects when asked and to find the difference between a series of objects when asked. Why? Those are two skills commonly used in IQ tests. We're trying to give his baseline assessment for kindergarten as much of a boost as possible. We all agree that he belongs in a regular classroom, not in a resource room.

IEPaloooza

So after having 10 people sit around in a circle to discuss one little four year old, we have an IEP for half a year. And the school district is threatening to force us to go to a different school if we want summer school. Because taking an autistic boy and putting him in a strange environment with new teachers for three weeks in the middle of the summer is productive. Yeah.

Anyway, they're thinking he's going to outgrow his AAC and need something more advanced soon. It's clearly appropriate for him. He navigates it like a pro. However, he's also created new problems by having a voice. Just as with spoken words, sometimes he's communicating wants and needs, and sometimes he's just making noises for internal reasons not relevant to the discussion.

The preschool directer thinks they pretty much have this one under control, and I tend to agree. Rather than saying something like, "No talker!" or "Talker down!" like the school district suggested, the teacher just says, "But we're not talking about X right now. Let's talk about Y." Just like any other kid babbling about something unrelated to the lesson. Sometimes when the lesson is over a skill he's already mastered, they just turn down the volume on his AAC and let him explore as much as he wants. This? This is why I am not taking him to a school district preschool.

Our next IEP will be for transitioning to kindergarten. I have to admit I'm concerned about this. I have faith in the school he'll be attending, but I can't control all the variables there either. What if he gets a horrible teacher? How much are they going to underestimate his abilities? How bad is it going to get next year when he's stuck in this new routine?

I'm glad he's doing so well with reading, because I feel like that's something that shows proof that he's educable. And it saddens me that he needs that. I feel like when it comes to special ed, some kids are taught, and some kids are warehoused.

Progress and the Boy

It's been a while, so here's what all's been going on.

The boy will have his AAC. Insurance is even paying for it. Wow. We can use our family grant money to cover the initial exam and possibly some training on how to use it with him, yay.

I don't doubt that it will be a tool to get him to talk more, not a permanent substitute for vocal speech. He may need some sort of AAC forever, we'll see, but he's definitely making more and more strides toward actual understandable speech.

He's picked up on my repeated attempts to get him to add adjectives to his noun labeling, so he'll point and say things like, "Blue fish. Green pants. Red bird." He actually seems to get some facial expressions. He's been playing Starfall.com a lot, and his favorite game is now the "All About Me" module. He's learned "boy" and "girl," though he doesn't always label correctly. He's learned happy, smiling, sad, and grumpy, and he'll make facial expressions to match. They're still exaggerated, but that's some big progress there!

I don't have to watch over him constantly to make sure he doesn't run away at events and in the store. He'll actually walk next to the cart. He told us he was ready for that step, and he was. Please, please, please let him tell us he's ready to potty train next!

Words Are Awesome

Quick note for some continued progress with King and talking. The other day we went out to dinner with friends, and he said hi to the waitress and thank you when she gave him a lollypop. Totally unprompted. I was impressed.  

When he was done eating,  he said "all done," and then he wanted to "wash hands." Yay. 

When we went home, my friend pulled out a camera. He stepped in front of the camera and said, "Say cheese!" He pointed out the "doggies" when the neighbor let hers loose in her yard, and we talked about the fire and how it was hot. 

He's really be echoing back new words when he encounters new things and using words appropriately. This is such huge progress. I don't know how his communication will look as an adult. He may still need some form of AAC for times of high stress, but I'm comforted to know he'll be able to use his voice some of the time.

Yes and No

A big sign of progress with the boy is that we're finally getting some yes and no answers out of him. This is huge.  We used to have to play a lot of guessing games at what he wanted. Now he's starting to use actual words to tell us, and he's letting us know when we guess right or wrong. Yay! 

He doesn't do it consistently, and sometimes it's more that he melts down or shoves things away for no, but it's starting to happen. Seriously, if I had to pick only two words he could say and consistently use, these would be the two. 

 

Studying - Or Not

King is on the border for qualifying for a study for kids using AAC devices. They want to see if the devices get kids to talk faster than those not using them. But they want kids with less than a 20 word spoken vocabulary. 

Initially they said we didn't qualify because I said he knows more than 20 words. But then later I clarified that he knows more than 20 words but doesn't functionally use them. He labels objects and things, he counts, and he'll say words after the fact but won't use the word to get the desired result. 

They decided that this would, in fact, qualify him. 

Since that conversation in the Fall, I'm pretty sure he's passed that threshold. I'm not sure what his current rate of language use is, but he regularly functionally uses words like, water, juice, more, please, cracker, again, up, go/let's go, etc. 

However, I'm pretty sure he doesn't actually do so more than 20 times per day. 

Well, we'll see. It's an observation only study, so we won't be able to get extra intervention services through it, but it would mean a little more money toward the swing set fund. Plus, you know, forwarding research and actual science. That beats feeding kids antifungal creams any day of the week. 

Everyone Loves Toys

King is doing well lately. I think part of it is organization, part of it is time, and part of it was the Christmas break which let me work with him more. He's taking more and using his words more functionally. He learned and used cracker, apple, banana, orange - and kept using them over and over. We had to put the kibosh on more than two bananas per day.

We also took all the toys scattered all over the house and organized them into clear bins. The old open toy shelf type thing wasn't working. Not only were the kids not using it and leaving toys everywhere, they'd also end up just piling toys into big, assorted messes in the bins. The floor wasn't that clean with all the toys preventing good sweeping, and the whole thing just made me feel tired and disorganized every time I looked at it.

So the new system with bins means each activity has a home, and each activity can be cleaned up after it's done. This has not only prompted better communication - legos, Play-doh, draw, blocks, but it's a visual gestural way to indicate exactly the activity you want to do. King can grab one of the bins, say "Open!" and then clean up afterward. He starts singing the clean up song, puts the toys back, closes the bin, and puts it where it belongs. This is huge!

Not only has he started using more language around this, he's been more functional overall. I think it helps all of us to have some more organization in our lives.

I will tell you the paint bin has been slightly problematic, though. I liked the idea of the paint bin. We have washable paints and an easel on which to use them. Problem is that it's become a preferred activity, and there's only so many head to toe cleanings we can do for a boy during the day. For now we've put the paint bin behind the gate, but maybe we'll figure out a way to limit the painting without all the meltdowns.

Apple, yes, plum, orange

The latest echololia. It took me a bit to realize he was saying "plum" and not "mom." So we'd have these conversations:

K: Apple
Me: You want an apple?
K: Yes. Mom.
Me: Good talking! I'll go get you an apple
K: Orange.

Heh, It took me a bit to realize that they were just a list of words, too. He's got a hand motion that goes with it, like he's packing things. It goes with his absolute love of the letter P and of the Fun With Phonics DVD, from what I can tell. About halfway through, when they pack for the picnic. You'll see what I mean.

And also related to his love of the letter P, he spontaneously picked up Hop on Pop and started reading the words hop and pop. He won't let me open the book. He insists on carrying the book over and trying to prop it up on a computer monitor, where it falls over, but he sounds out the words on it.

Reason #1232 why my son is awesome

Giggles.

Teaching a nonverbal kid to read

Mr K is an interesting boy. Although he's not particularly verbal, he is very interested in letters and numbers.

He can count to at least twenty. I'm sure he can count higher, but we haven't tested him on this. He knows all his letters, and he knows the sounds they make. He can even sign them all. If you show him the alphabet, he gets excited and points and labels all the letters for you.

So the next step, as suggested by his preschool teacher, is to get him to read. If he can read and articulate the letter sounds, eventually he can articulate sounds in verbal speech. It's backwards from the way most kids go about it, but you have to play to a kid's strengths.