2/4/09

Back to the discussion about communicating with Tyler, it's important to remember that although Tyler cannot verbally communicate, it does not mean that he can receive/understand verbal communication. Tyler has well established receptive language and although it's easy to forget to talk to him/reason with him since he cannot verbally talk back, I promise you, he understands a lot. Example: When I dropped him off at daycare the other day, he was playing with some of the princess playset plates. Plates, coasters, frisbees, etc. are Tyler's idea of heaven, cause he can spin them on the hardwood floors, his stim. Anyway, he was doing this while I was talking to the daycare provider and the daughter of the daycare provider, who is 4, wanted to play with the plates too. She grabbed a couple and staretd to play.. Tyler looked at her and clenches his teeth (first sign of frustration and if not remedied can easily turn into biting the other person or head banging. The daycare provider asked her daughter not to take them away from Tyler, however, I see that there are around 10 plates and plenty to share between 2 people. By now, she has given the plates back to Tyler but then re-taken them and moved a bit further away from Tyler (smart girl, stay away from boy who bites, ha ha!!). Tyler then walks over to her and leans down and is visibly frustrating and makes a whiny frustrated noise. I get down to Tyler's level and explain to him that the two plates that she has are hers to play with and then I point (use lots of gestures) to the remaning assortment of plates and say, those are Tyler's plates. Then I reiterate one more time, by pointing, where her plates are vs. where his plates are and grabbed his hand to walk back to his plates. He was completely fine with this situatino and went back to playing with his platse without any argument, yeah! He totally understood what I was explaining to him and accepted it, even if it wasn't the most desirable outcome for him. Anyway, just wanted to make sure everyone knew that it's totaly possible to talk to Tyler and have him understand what you are saying even if you aren't using signs to talk to him, although they do help. The other day, Tyler was frustrated about dinner and I can't remember exactly what it was that was bothering him but seve said something about "having dinner" and then one other phrase and then I said to him "sign eat".. as soon as he signed eat, Tyler knew exactyl what was happening went to the table to eat and stopped making his frustrating noises.. so both definetly help in some situations but it doesn't mean that he doesn't understand words.


On another note.. here's an update to the story I posted a while back about that family with the out of control 13 year old girl and how much a week of intensive ABA therapy has changed their life. It really really works, why on gods green earth can we not have insurance cover the costs, sigh. We live and breathe ABA in our household..even for Ben. It has helped us on so many levels. Steve has been really frustrated lately with Ben and his eating issues (too long of a story to get into) and we talked about it and had a plan in place (based upon ABA principles) and last night I was not there for dinner and Steve got Ben to eat all of his dinner!! One of the things Ben loves to do is look at dinosaurs (pictuese) on daddy's computer. There is somethign called the ABC's of behavioral analysis. A is hte antecedent or what happens before the behavior, B is the behavior and C is the consequence. Well the antecedent was that Ben was able to look at dinosaurs when dad would cook dinner. Then it wold be time for dinner so Ben was expected to eat and thenw ould exhibit a not so pleasant behavior of taking about one bite nad refusing ot eat anything more or anything new and the consequence was ok, then you can get down and go play and dad was left incredibly frustrating and Ben was incredibly hungry then righ tbefore bed. So not only was Ben having to stop something he loved doing to eat which is somethign he doesn't love doing, but then the consequence was then you don't have to eat. So we had to change both the antecedent and the consequence. (By the way, there are many moer issues regarding his eating other than this one example). We no longer let Ben look at dinosaurs before eating so that he doesn't have to stop doing something that is so fun and then see eating as a punishment. We reward Ben for eating all of his food by letting him then look at dinosaurs on the computer and if he tries new food, he can get either a jelly bean or fruit snacks as a reward. We make sure to put smal portions on his plate to help set him up for success and then of course will give him more food after he's eaten it all if he wants it but this way, he continues to get positive reinforcement for eating rather than all the negative attention he was getting for not eating. It's eliminating a bunch of frustration and wasted food in our house. He's never allowed to have any snacks at night uniless he first finishes his dinner, yes we save it if he hasn't eaten it and then if he wants a snack, he'll eat his dinner and then get a snack. Happend the oter night. we are trying to get him to eat new food, so he had a PB&J for dinner (far from a favorite)and didn't finish it. No problem. Then asked for snacks so I said sure, let's finish your dinner first. So he finished his PB&J that we had saved and then he was able to get the 5 cheetos which is what he wanted. worked like a charm and he had no resistance to the rule at all. It just takse the initial patience and consistency for the parents to make it through the establishing of the rule, and once it's in place, it's very easy for the most part to continue enforcing it.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/02/04/autism.resolution/index.html