12-8-2008 Tyler Laptop

Here's the video of Tyler playing with the laptop. This video is very enlightening as it's the first time I noticed everthing around him is alphabet related. The little green square next time has leters you take in and out that makes the letter name and sound. The yellow bus is an alphabet bus with letters all around and then way in the background is an alphabet train, our boy loves his letters! We've been working for a week on learning the letters of the alphabet in sign language. He's doing great. I do hand over hand training for A,B,and C and then go through the rest of the song just showing him the letters. He loves it, and as of this weekend he's starting to watch my fingers and then watch his hands/fingers and trying to make the signs for the other letters. We are going to work on him knowing this as well as he does Lion, Bear, and hat (new sign mastered this weekend without prompting) so we can get him to reqeust it for his favorite toys. He loves his letter puzzle so he can request (MAND) letters for it or MAND letters for his Leap frog or his soon to be Word Wammer, he gets really excited when he gets his letters right.

The other thing I wanted to point out so you could all see what it looks like is "flapping".. it's quick in the video so you may not notice, you may chalk it up to just being excitnig but in essense that's when flapping normally occurs, when they kids get really excited or overstimulated. You'll notice it towards the end of the video as he faces the camera and is excited about his successes, we are too buddy!

We took the boys out to eat this weekend (packed a lunch for Tyler) and we realize it's getting increasingly difficult to go out in public with Tyler, difficult to keep him regulated. I am going to start plan more outtings to unfamiliar places but for short durations to really work on his behavior. He was very resistant to putting on his caot when we left the restaurant. Well there were a lot of things that were difficult but they were all tolerable and just part of the process. We packed a familiar lunch for Tyler so he'd be comfortable eating, we brought lots of toys, some stimmy some not to keep him entertained and then we sat in a booth so that he'd be somewhat enclosed by not strapped in (lots of planning involved. Tyler was very overactive, never sat down (maybe we try the booster chair next time and see if that helps) and was in a constant stage of pushing on me. You'll get that with kids on the spectrum, some can't stand to be touched at all or have anything near them and some long for that deep pressure/touch. Tyler is a mixture of both, some places he needs lots of touch and some places he hates to be touched. But as a parent, it can get very annoyign to have someone constantly pushing into you, walking on you. Until you see it, it's hard to explain. Proper response is to work to give him more deep pressure and teach him a way to request it rather than walking all over us to get it. And to not squeeze him after walking or suddenly he's being reinforced to walk all over you to get what he wants. So much to think about with every aspect of his life.