Helping Children Recover from Brain Injury
Joey loves fire trucks. Whenever I show him something red, he’ll often say fire engine on his eye gaze device after he labels it. So when I came across a fire engine book I figured I should try it with him. To be honest, the book does not have a lot of the qualities I usually look for when I’m choosing a good book to use with Joey, but it did have a dog and a fire engine. Since we are going for interactions and not quality literature, I thought we’d give it a go. [Read more…]
I love when I find a simple picture book that gives so many great opportunities to model using Joey’s AAC device (and builds in some academic skills as well!). My most recent discover is Oops! Pounce! Quick! Run! By Mike Twohy. [Read more…]
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…]
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…]
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.
