by Tim on August 31, 2009
This has been an eventful week here in the Flashlight House to say the least. Late last week we celebrated the anniversary of Mary’s 29th birthday! And tomorrow the J-Man turns 4. I can’t believe it; time goes by so fast.
We don’t do much in the way of birthday presents or parties around here really. We’re a pretty low-key bunch. About all Mary and I do for each other is the one not having the birthday goes and picks up takeout, we try to spend some unhurried time together, and we each get some additional me time that typically involves one of us getting a couple of hours out of the house sometime around our actual birthday.
The J-Man seems like he really couldn’t care less about birthdays. Actually, birthday parties routinely upset him. We’ve gone to his friends’ parties, and – understatement warning – rarely does he enjoy himself much. Strange places, crowds, noise, lots of running kids, etc. just don’t do for him, which I can understand. We go because we feel like he needs some practice at social events, but we know when he’s had enough and adjust accordingly. I can’t remember any of his birthday parties where he didn’t just burrow into somebody’s shoulder most of the time.
The concept of presents to unwrap doesn’t seem to click with him either. His general lack of attachment to things doesn’t lend itself to being excited about gifts on his birthday, Christmas, or whenever. And in what seems endemic to autistic kids, he absolutely hates the Happy Birthday song. He covers his ears and retreats into himself. Somebody really needs to do a research study on this phenomenon.
So, we decided to forgo a birthday party for him this year and celebrate it more in his style rather than in the way I think people (and for a long time us, too) expect it should be. We bought him a new swing for the swing set outside, one with a high back and built almost like a small, plastic recliner. He can’t use kid swings because when he gets excited and stims out, he lets go of the swing and flies off. (Thank God for mulch…) Obviously he’s too big for a toddler bucket swing. This new one is rated up to at least 100 lbs and has a five-point harness.
The weather is supposed to be absolutely beautiful tomorrow afternoon when he gets home from school. (70s in early September?!) What will be our birthday party then? Swinging outside – just us and my dad. Simple gifts. But the kind he loves most of all.
These past few days have gone like that too – one small but unspeakably wonderful gift after another shining through even in the midst of the craziness of everyday life.
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In our last IEP goals recap from last quarter, the J-Man had a great nine weeks overall and showed great gains. This past quarter just ended last Thursday, and our little superstar continues to make great strides toward what we thought were some pretty ambitious goals for this year.
As a refresher for those curious about how we do things around here, the quarterly evaluations are done based on how well the kids are progressing toward meeting their IEP goals for the entire year, and then they’re assigned an evaluation code based on the following scale:
1 – Insufficient progress to meet IEP goal by end of year; below expected mastery of goal at this point in the year
2- Skills are emerging; mastery of goal is still inconsistent; student needs support to meet goals
3 – Consistent progress toward goals; on track to meet annual goal
3* – Consistent progress toward goals + some evidence of application and independence (Not sure why they need another 3 score here, but whatever. “Application and independence” are definitely two words we like.)
4 – Annual goal has been mastered; able to generalize the skill independently in multiple settings.
As I mentioned last time, don’t ask me why they felt the need to add a 3* in between 3 and 4 rather than just fix the scale to begin with. But anyway…
We rounded the halfway mark of this year early in March, so in light of that, his progress toward goals he has a few more months to meet is awesome.
Here are those categories and all the great stuff he’s been up to lately.
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It’s been a long few days of continued sicknesses and traveling out of town – which by the way went pretty well by our travel standards – so we’ve been slow to report much in the way of what’s up around here lately. (Pretty much just sickness, pregnancy, school, and work if you’re really dying to know.)
At Mary’s parents’ house, we discovered what may be the ultimate J-Man toy!
Numbers and words and wheels, oh my! What’s not to love?
He carried these around pretty much everywhere. He had a bazillion little cars to choose from at their house, but he always chose these two. Just for fun, I looked through the pile of other cars and none of them had such a combination of numbers and words. No mystery here!
Also not surprisingly, we rediscovered over the weekend that Wheel of Fortune is also a huge hit with him. Big letters stay on the TV screen for long periods of time – it doesn’t get much better than that.
Note to J-Man – I am NOT putting numbers and sponsors on our car. Well, on second thought, find us a rich sponsor and I’ll consider it.
by Tim on January 14, 2009
Because 99% of the stuff in a toy store isn’t really made with the learning needs of autistic children in mind (not likely gonna see “For reading levels 6 and up and speech levels 1 and up!” on a toy) and because there’s no telling what the J-Man will play with and what he won’t, I’ve started making ‘folder games’.
These are just very cheap learning games made from manila folders, velcro dots, and other stuff that you can for the most part find around the house, or for almost no cost at the store. And when you’re done with them, you can just fold them up and slide them on a shelf.
The ones I’ve made lately center on matching words with objects (e.g. a square of one color, then he puts the word under it – or vice-versa) with some number and letter matching thrown in too. This seems like a big leap in mental effort for him, so his attention span is lower. But that’s just how he normally is with newer challenges, so it’s nothing unusual. He perseveres and soon amazes us with the things he can learn.
So I’d like to show you three examples of these folder games. I think the entire cost for these three activities took less than $2 out of the supply budget plus the time it took us to make them. And as a bonus, the folders themselves are reusable for countless other activities I haven’t finished yet.
This is just a manila folder with eight velcro dots stuck in it – four for the color squares, which are made from construction paper – and four for the label strips, which I printed off my computer as sheets of about 20 words each and then cut them out. All of these things are laminated with matching velcro dots on the back so they’ll stick to the folder.
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by Tim on January 3, 2009
As I described yesterday in the “One Syllable At a Time” post, we’re getting some great mileage out of breaking everything down into these syllable-by-syllable exchanges, going as far as dividing one syllable sounds into even smaller parts as needed.
So, much to our eternal and unending delight, the J-Man has two wonderful sentences he likes to say, provided you do the syllable exchange with him.
We have an “I Want” picture board where he can grab a food picture and stick it at the end of the “I Want ____” part (thanks to the velcro). Then we do:
J: “I”
Us: “I….”
J: “wuhhh-uh”
Us: “want….”
And then he tries to say whatever food it is he picked. It’s getting more common for him to put it together without us and say “I wuhhh-uh” before we have to chime in. Yay! When you think about it, you’ll realize what a fundamental part of our development it is to be able to ask for what we want.
But, of course, our favorite is this (said in a rather dramatic volume):
J: “I”
Me: “I”
J: “luhhhh”
Me: “luhhhh…”
J: “vvvvuuuuuhhhhh”
Me: “love….”
J: “yeeeehhh”
Me: “yeee….”
J: “eeee-oooo”
Me: “you!”
J: “Dah-deh”
Me: “Daddy!”
J: “ah”
Me: “and…”
J: “Ma-ma!”
Me: “Mama!”
Believe me, I’m choking back tears just writing this.
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by Tim on January 2, 2009
Since we’re still in a post-holiday funk around here and about as lively as the furniture, I’m doing a little content recycling today from a recent comment I made to at least get back to posting. I think all the endless eating and football-watching has killed off a bunch of my brain cells!
Over the last few days, we’ve learned some interesting insights into how to get the J-Man to use some more speech. He is more and more able to give us some idea of how much he understands us and is trying to communicate back to us using a combination of word and syllable approximations as part of what I’m calling ’syllable-by-syllable communication’.
‘Syllable-by-syllable communication’ (my made-up term) has turned into a real winner around here once we pushed him toward it. With this, he communicates one syllable of a word using his best approximation, then we repeat it back to him indicating that we heard and understood him, then he continues with his best approximation of the next syllable, and so on. Following this approach, we’ve gotten through entire sentences, stories, etc. But most of all, we’ve been able to differentiate many words for the first time.
For example, any word that started with ‘m’ used to be ‘muh-muh’ or ‘mo-mo’ or something like that, and he wouldn’t go any further, or we didn’t push him enough to fill in more of the syllables. Now, for example, ‘monkey’ goes like this:
[Note - he tends to get a smidge echolalic with syllables.]
J – “Muh-muh”
Me – “Mon”
J – “kee-kuh”
Me – “key!”
And ‘many’ might go like (with J-Man and I alternating): “Meh-muh”; “Meh”; “Nee-nee”; “Nee!”
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