4/8/08

Sorry it's been so long since I've given an update. I was out of town the later part of last week and the family has had a run-in with the flu so things were kind of chaotic and many sessions were cancelled as a result. Thanks to everyone who pitched in to help out dad while mom was away!

Everyone seems to be on the road to recovery, thank goodness. We are really hoping that winter is coming to an end and we can have a summer of good health. We always take a step backwards when an illness comes around and it takes a good 2 weeks for Tyler to get back to where he was before the illness.

Today's session went well. Tyler was doing a fantastic job of imitating during breakfast this morning. He also showed off his receptive language skills by demonstrating he understood what "stop" meant. We were pounding on the table and we use "go" and "stop" has commands to either start pounding or stop pounding. He stopped almost everytime that I said stop and did "go" almost every time as well!

We also worked on some language skills by saying "ba, ba, ba, ba" before blowing bubbles to then try to get Tyler to make that specific sound as a request to get bubbles rather than any sound. At first he began by making any sound (which by the way, 4 months ago, he never used any sounds as a basis for a request) but then he started to make the Ba sound which then become the Bub sound. yeah Tyler. Oh, and he also is definetly saying "da-da" intentionally and even said "daddy" once.

Other than that, today's session was pretty standard. We couldn't up the ante very much because he was over regulated today so it was pretty easy to get him excited and I worked a lot on keeping him calm.

Autism training for firefighters begins at the firestation tomorrow and I'm really excited to be doing my part for autism awareness month.