Nicola's Baby Blog

Autism - a Progress Report

Jake did really well at his weekly appointment today.  In the past, as you know, we did the PECS thing - that's the Picture Exchange Communication System - but after mastering it, Jake soon decided to give that up.  He's a stubborn little boy, and a bit lazy too, I'm sure, and he'd had enough of having to work to get the things he wanted.

J, his Speech Language Pathologist, turned instead to structured play.  She created a timetable with photographs of the toys that Jake likes and then we work hard to teach him to follow the timetable and to understand that one thing is first and this thing follows afterward.  As Jake finishes with one toy, it gets put aside and the photo gets moved over into the other column.  We also teach him to sit down in "his" chair while he's there.

When we got there today, he ran to his chair and sat down.  He looked over at the timetable and waited for his first toy.  Clever boy.  J sat next to him and I sat across from him.  We helped Jake learn to share his toys by saying "my turn" and patting our own chests.  We then take the toy from him, gently, and play with it for a few seconds, making all the appropriate noises for his cars.  Jake sits back and watches intently, obviously longing to have the toy back.

A few seconds later, we lift his hand to his chest and repeat the sign and the words: my turn.  Jake gets given the toy and play resumes.

When Jake grows tired of one toy, J will swing her hands in from of her, back and forth, and ask Jake "all done with the truck?"  We get a bit of a blank look from Jake but he starts looking toward the toy box where the next treat will come from.

But today, as J asked "all done with the truck?", Jake swung his own hands in across the table in the same motion that J uses.

Could we be on our way to using a bit of sign language??

Jake even pushes the fire truck to J a few times, which is a fabulous new thing for him.

And when we repeated "bus" while Jake was playing with the bus, Jake repeated "buh, buh, buh". 

Jake definitely has his limitations - now - but he will overcome them.  I can see it happening.

We should be starting OT (Occupational Therapy) in November and I'm sure we'll see Jake come in leaps and bounds.

10.10.07 21:55