One of our biggest frustrations with the Monster is how he’s something of a broken record.
He does certainly have a good library of words to pull from when he wants to talk, but he’s not quite yet mastered getting it through anything other than his rote phrases. For the longest time, it was a litany of “Can I have X, please”. Continue reading
Lately, the Monster’s been on-and-off about being good using long, real sentences.
He can, when he wants, construct a good, normal request. For instance, this evening, he asked me, “Can you to turn on Sesame Street, please?” (Well, the ‘please’ was with coaxing, and ‘to turn on’ isn’t a great construction… but it’s head and shoulders from where he was last year.) Continue reading
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. Continue reading
One refrain that we hear frequently when dealing with children who have Autism is that we should limit the choices we offer them. It’s meant as a constructive mechanism to ensure that they’re not overwhelmed with trying to decide, and helps to encourage verbal communication with children with language delays.
It’s also something that, after an entire day stuck in the house with the Monster, I’ve discovered that both the wife and I suck absolutely at. Continue reading
Sorry for not posting yesterday – things just got way, way too hectic at work, and I just ran out of time to get something scribbled up here.
One of our biggest frustrations with the Monster’s verbal ability is a lack of narrative tone. He’s very good at descriptive, literal use of language, and has been known to burst out with an observation about his surroundings – what’s in his view, what’s where, describing things… but he’s not much for telling the story of his day. Continue reading
One of the goals for the coming year on the IEP is to get the Monster to ask for help when he needs it.
Asking for help doesn’t necessarily come naturally to anyone, but the issue here is getting him to verbally request assistance from another person, be it a classmate or an adult. Continue reading
I was going to write a follow-up to yesterday’s post. I’m going to wait till tomorrow now to do that, since I have a meeting scheduled with the city regarding the abject failure of the bus on a performance basis.
Instead, I’m going to dive back into the whole IEP thing, since that meeting’s a week from today. Continue reading
So, against the backdrop of trying to get the Monster toilet trained this week – an activity that, as you’ve all been aware, is going kind of in fits and starts – I’ve been spending a good amount of time with the kids. Continue reading
Verbal communication is one of those pesky things that we all have trouble learning at some point or another.
The Monster, as referenced frequently, handles his limited verbal communication by sticking to scripted phrases that he’s learned. These, by and large, go to the format of “Can I have <X>, please?” He’s figured out enough of English to realize that X can be just about anything. Continue reading
Let me lead off with a funny thing about the Monster’s use of language this morning, before I dig into what I really wanted to write about.
On Saturday evening, I went to a party celebrating the end of National Novel Writing Month (which I do almost every year), and because the wife had something going on at our house, I took the kids with me. Monster was, as almost always, exceptionally well behaved in public once I made sure he was well fed. At the end of the party, though, we got slices of cake, and I gave him a portion because he’d been good. “Now Monster,” I cautioned him. “You can’t eat it with your bare hands. You have to use your fork.” He nodded and took his fork and I turned to talk to someone for a moment… Continue reading