Emerging Skills

As we’ve gone through the IEP process again recently to get the Monster his ESY services, we’ve been left with the feeling that we’re just not getting all of the services that we would really care to get.

A lot of this comes in the area of speech therapy – he does get three sessions a week.  None of these sessions are individual – they’re all small group or a push-in to his class (which, itself, is not very large) – and while both of us would like to see him get at least one individual session a week, I’m very quickly coming to the realization that a) we’re not going to get it and b) it’s not going to happen even if they wanted to, as they’re already short on resources.

The recent research, of course, that a good majority of children with Autism will develop appropriate verbal skills by age eight is heartening… but also spurs us to try to get him all the more support that we can get for him.

It’s in light of such that it’s interesting when something seems to emerge as if out of left field.

The last week and a half, the Monster’s been out of school due to an extended spring break.  (His first day back was yesterday.)  So he’s not had services for roughly about two weeks now.

We can usually predict what his verbal patterns are – the fact that he likes “Can I have X, please” constructions, or his yelling “X time!” when he needs something in specific.  Or the fact that sometimes, even getting him to get to the former of those two is like pulling teeth, or that he’ll mumble/swallow phrases.  Sometime on Sunday, though, I noticed something new emerge.  “No thank you” as a response.

Not just “No”, which we get frequently, but “No, thank you.”  (And the occasional “Yes, thank you”, but more frequently the oft-desired-and-rarely-heard “Yes, please”.)

I don’t know what provoked it to come out suddenly, but it’s also not going away, and I’m very grateful for it…

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