One surprising aspect of Joey’s communication growth over the last year has been to watch how his overall methods of communication increased along with his use of his Alternative and Augmentative Communication (AAC) device. I often hear people fear that using an AAC device will mean that a child stops developing oral language, because he no longer has a need for it. I hear this from teachers and parents, and frankly, the first time anyone told me about an AAC device I asked the same thing. “If he can push a button and get what he wants, why on earth would he ever speak again?” “If he can talk, then why would we introduce him to a way of communicating that does not involve oral language?” [Read more…]
Social Learning
Here in Northern Virginia, we had a string of snow days a few weeks ago that kept us inside and our kids home from school. Not being one from letting something like a day home from school stop learning, this seemed like the perfect opportunity to incorporate other children into my work with Joey. In the classroom, I’ve found that so many of the routine, repetitive practices like the daily calendar lessons are powerful because children learn from their peers. Typically, Joey is not able to benefit from peer models during our one on one sessions, but Monday, with schools closed and the roads perfectly fine, it seemed like a good time to play school at Joey’s house.
I brought my kindergarten daughter along for my session, and Joey’s older brother, who is also in kindergarten, joined us. The two older kids seemed unsure at first, but being professional kindergarten students who both participate in a morning meeting and calendar time every day at school, they quickly figured out their roles.
Joey was an excited participant in this experiment. He grinned as we went through his typical calendar routine. As we counted the dates on the calendar, Joey counted along with us, making a verbal utterance for each number, and occasionally glancing at the two older kids who were counting along.
Of course, our new eager classmates were quick to provide answers that Joey typically is given wait-time for, but this gave him an opportunity to see other kids answering the same questions he answers every day. It gave his work authenticity, and made it social and interactive.
We were able to do a morning meeting with a greeting where they gave each other high five’s, our calendar math work with number recognition and patterning, and then read two of our interactive books. Although Joey was quieter during this session than he typically is, he was alert and aware of what was going on, and did not use the device to tell me he was bored of lead me off topic by telling me a story about helicopters, airplanes, or spiders.
When we read Seals on the Bus, which is currently one of Joey’s favorite books, he was able to watch his brother and my daughter act out parts of the story. So far, Joey has not fully embraced symbolic play during our sessions. During this session, he was able to watch the two older children become silly and act out the story. As they laughed at the silly things they made the people on the bus do, he smiled. I’m hoping that watching them enjoy symbolic play with objects will help him begin to engage in symbolic play.
Our mini-class was so much fun that now I’m hoping for more days of closed school with good road conditions so we can repeat it this winter.
Choosing His Words Carefully
Joey’s eyes hovered over his device, scanning it for the words he wanted to use. He repeated some words over and over again, and each time I tried to follow up and understand what he was saying. I kept getting it wrong. I’d ask some sort of clarifying question, and he’d go back into his device to repeat the words again, putting them in a different order or adding a new word to the mix. Off. Brown. Down. Turn. Fast. Down. Black. Turn. Yet any comment I made about what he was trying to tell me was met with a head shake. Eventually, a few tears began to run down his face. Through the tears he went back into his talky, looking for new words to make himself clear. [Read more…]
The Power of Collaboration
I read the book Seals on the Bus to Joey, while he sat with his physical therapist behind him so that he could sit on a bench and not his chair. This isn’t an easy activity for Joey, and he struggled a bit to keep his head up while we read the book and played with the bus and the animal toys. A few times his head fell forward, out of a loss of control and exhaustion from working so hard. Other times he struggled to grab the toys, and his physical therapist helpfully coached me in how to assist him in making his grasp stronger and firmer. At other times, Joey threw himself backwards in the therapist’s, and I watched as she carefully held him, calmed him, and coached him into helping him sit back up. [Read more…]
Painting the Gingerbread Man
When I pulled out paint during my session with Joey a few weeks ago, a smile spread across his face. Joey knew immediately what I had planned. He went into his talky and said PAINT. Joey loves to paint, which is good because painting gives us so many good opportunities to incorporate language and fine motor goals, while tying these goals together with whatever theme or book we are focused on at the moment. In fact, when we read Seals on the Bus , Joey specifically used his eye gaze “talky” to ask me to paint. The next time I came back I brought yellow paint and a picture of a bus.
After reading two different versions of The Gingerbread Man, I decided we should paint our own gingerbread men. I brought four different colors of paint, an outline of a gingerbread man, and different types of brushes. Painting with Joey isn’t always the neatest activity, because his excitement can lead him to lose control of his muscles, causing him to sweep the brush into the air with wide sweeping motions, painting anything that happens to be in the vicinity. He can also become so overly excited that he grabs the paper and balls it up by accident. So far we’ve kept the paint away from his talky, but I’m sure one day the screen will also end up splattered with paint.
To help Joey, we tape the paper onto a cookie tray. The tray provides a slight lip so that Joey knows where the paper ends, but also allows us to pick the paper up and hold it closer or further away from Joey, while still having it on a hard surface. We can hold the tray, and move it so that he is painting the Gingerbread man’s arm, or leg, or head. Or, we can slightly tilt the tray up so that he has a slanted surface. The tray even has Velcro on the bottom so that we can leave it Velcro’ed to the tray of his wheelchair.
Painting not only gives Joey the chance to create something, but it gives him the power of choices. We work on his language by asking him what color paint he wants (and expect an answer from the talky). We can ask him what part of the gingerbread he wants to paint next, and he can use his body part words to tell us what part to do next. I want him to have the opportunity to make deliberate decisions about art, and then to be able to follow through and see how his individual decisions come together into a whole project. This, after all, is what we all do when we complete a project. At three, children are beginning to move from just marking a paper with random colors and lines on paper, to making purposeful marks and lines that represent something real. I want Joey to experience creating meaningful lines as well.
For this particular session, Joey’s older brother happened to be home from school, so he joined us in our painting project. Both boys seemed to enjoy being together, but what made it even better that his brother was there was that his brother’s presence provided him with motivation. Anyone who has been a teacher knows that once one child in a class gets a unique idea, others follow. So once Joey’s brother painted a mouth on his gingerbread man, what did Joey do? He studied the words in his talky for a bit before selecting ‘mouth’. Of course. If his brother’s gingerbread man had a mouth, then his gingerbread man needed a mouth too. But there is no way he would have painted a mouth if I suggested it. There is nothing quite like the love for an older sibling.
Painting also gives Joey an opportunity to practice his grasp, and his motor planning. He needs to relax his body, and work on getting his arm to connect to the paper. Joey’s physical therapist happened to be with us for this session, and she had great ideas on how to make the painting even more of a success for Joey.
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