A Quick, Little Funny

Bobby was working on vocabulary words in therapy today.  His therapist recently added some new flash cards which Bobby has only seen 2-3 times.  When she presented this card....

his response was....."Crayoffs."  Yep, pretty sure that this is my new favorite word!!!!

A Week's Worth of Behavioral Therapy

School starts next week and I have discovered that the easiest way for his teachers and school therapists to catch up on what Bobby has been working on in ABA (applied behavioral analysis) over the summer is to videotape his therapy sessions so that they can see first hand.  This idea started when his speech therapist was trying to figure out a time when she could come and see one of his sessions, but her schedule just wouldn't allow this, so videotaping was the solution.  When I took in the tape, everyone that works with him wanted to watch it and they found it extremely helpful.

Bobby has been working on quite a few new things in therapy so I took my camera everyday this week to make sure that I got everything new on tape.  I would love to share the videos here, especially the ones of Bobby reading, but they are just too long.  I am, however, going to share the candid pictures that I took of Bobby on his breaks....just because they make me laugh.

Monday...

Such an odd angle

Trying to figure out how to get out the window and over to the McDonald's!

He thinks that he is a cat...batting the ball between his paws.

Tuesday....

Another odd angle

All of this hard work makes a boy thirsty

Wednesday....

He did something that he has never done before when we walked into the waiting room....he laid down on the couch instead of going over to the toy area to play.

He finally had to go into the therapy room and get to work.  He did get a break....

Not even sure what the heck is going on here!!

Finally Thursday....

Why yes that is a bowl of french fries from home.  It was lunchtime.

Don't you bring bowls of french fries everywhere you go too?

Yes, he does actually do some work while he's there...

Something is happening for the next six days!!!  Well, more specifically, something is NOT happening for the next six days......Bobby has ZERO appointments scheduled!!!  No therapy or anything else but fun planned for the next six days and then....SCHOOL STARTS!!  To top if off, when Bob gets home from work today he will be on vacation for a week!!  Honestly we haven't had six days of no appointments since Christmas break when Bobby had the flu and we had to cancel his appointments. Funny thing is....Bobby has been asking for "school bus" and "Ms. Kim" for days now.  Hopefully the rain will go away and we can plan some super fun activities.

The Most Beautiful Sound That I've Ever Heard

I've been telling you lately about how well Bobby has been doing.  This school year has been the most successful one this far and the most exciting thing has been the increase in Bobby's verbal language.

Last school year, Ms. Kim started a photo album for Bobby.  She took pictures of all of the people that work with Bobby and the other kids that come in and out of the autism room throughout the day so that he could learn people's names.  She also added pictures of Mommy and Daddy and labeled everyone's names in the photo album.  Well, this school year he actually learned everyone's names and can verbally identify every picture in the photo album.  We also took this task to behavioral therapy and added pictures of people from Bobby's home life.

Early on we realized that it was important to only have the person's face in the picture.  I took in some pictures to therapy that I had of some of his autism classroom peers.  He focused on other things in the pictures (ie, the backpack that one of the kids was wearing).  He struggled in identifying Daddy in a picture in which Bob has sunglasses on and Bobby couldn't really see his eyes.  There is a picture of Bob in the group of pictures that we are working on in therapy that Bobby also struggled with...even though I cropped the picture to only get Bob's face, Bobby would say "Rhino" when he saw the picture because he knows that Bob was sitting in the Rhino in the picture because Bobby had seen the  uncropped picture and was there when the picture was taken.

It has finally "clicked" with Bobby and he is now labeling the people in the pictures with very little problem.  When Ms. Kim was working with Bobby earlier in the year on people, she got out a hand mirror so that Bobby could learn to identify himself.  He finally got that the boy in the mirror is "Bobby" and lately in therapy he is identifying himself in the numerous pictures of him that are in the identifying people program.  Ms. Kim continued to work on name identification with Bobby.

One day while at home, I'm not even sure what or how I said it, but I asked him his name and he said "Bobby."  After I picked myself off of the floor I asked him again and he repeated his answer.  OMG...he knows his name!!!!!   It wasn't long until he answered, "Bobby Miff."  I was so excited that when he went to therapy the next day I showed off his "new trick" to his therapist.  She was briefly excited too and then said, "that's not your name.  You're name is Bobby Sssssmmmmmmmith."  Since she knew that he did not have a problem with making the s or the m sound, she sat him down and he got rewarded for saying his name correctly.  He exaggerated the sm sound like she did for a couple of days, but he leaned to say his name.  Ms. Kim and Ms. Sharon taught Bobby to say his name!!!!!  Quite frankly Bob and I still get giddy when we hear him say it.  After all, we have been waiting years!!

So last night after his bath, I took a little video so that you could hear too...

Then at Grandma Carolyn's retirement party, a man that worked with my mom sat down beside Bobby and said, "when's your birthday?"  I answered for him and the next day in therapy was telling Ms. Sharon about the exchange.  Ms. Sharon:  "Well, he's going to learn the answer!!!!"  Me (in my head):  "O Lord, help us all!!"

Sharon got out two index cards and wrote "May 19th" on one and "9 years old" on the other (even though Bobby was only 8, but had only a few weeks until he turned 9).  First she had Bobby repeat the words written on the cards to her, then asked him "When is your birthday?" and had him repeat the words on the card.  I wrote the same words on index cards at home and we worked on it here too. We faded back to showing him the card, taking it away and then asking the question and were finally able to fade the card completely away.  This entire process took about 2 weeks, but Bobby rose to the occasion...

Sorry to those of you who have an iPhone or iPad, because I know these videos won't show up at all.

Honestly I had given up on the fact that Bobby would be answering questions.  We can't wait to see/hear what Bobby learns next!!!!!!

After School With Grandma

What to do?  What to do?  There was a 2 hour early dismissal from school today so we had a 45 minute wait until Bobby's regular ABA therapy session.    

Grandma Carolyn came to Morgantown this morning to run an errand with me and came along to help spend the 45 minutes.  We decided to stop and get Bobby a snack, pick him up from school and stop off at the Westover Park to let him play.  Boy was he excited...especially because Grandma was along when I picked him up from school.  He got out of the car, for some reason stopped and took off his shoes and socks, and ran right over to the play unit while carefully making sure not to drop a french fry.  If you follow my mom on facebook you probably saw many of these pics today since they were taken on her phone.

Finally the french fries were finished and the climbing began...

Time to go to therapy.  I was a little worried that he would be very fussy since this is definitely not the  usual routine.  Thankfully he went in the building like any other day.

Time for therapy...

After therapy was over, we drove back through Westover Park and stopped at the pond.  I was extremely nervous taking him out by the water but he was a champ.  He went right to the dock and looked over at the small fish swimming around.

After the pond it was time to go home.  Of course, as soon as we got out of the car Bobby wanted to go SWIMMING!  My, oh my, was it cold!!!  Did I mention super windy too!!  Bobby just hung out on the deck for a while...

He finally got in, but didn't stay too long...

After dinner Bobby wanted to "ride in car," so....

we went for a ride in Grandma Carolyn's car.  Not sure what his fascination is with Grandma's car, but he definitely has one.  

Grandma went home after the ride, Bobby got a bath, and now we are hanging out in front of the tv and playing on the computers.  Boy I'm tired!!  What a great day!!

After School Schedule

Bobby has a modified school day and leaves everyday at 2:00.  He doesn't get to come straight home and play, we stop off at either behavioral (typically 4 days a week) or occupational therapy (one day a week).  Today was behavioral therapy.  I had my camera today to take pictures for Bobby's school visual schedule, so I took some extra pics to share.

 Actually waiting nicely!

Working with Sharon (for those of you who know her and know how much she hates having her picture taken, just pretend that you never saw this!!!)...

Looking out the window on one of his breaks...

Guess what he is looking at out the window!!  Bobby's happiest place...

McDonald's drive thru!!!!  He could spend hours looking out this window!!

After we got home Bobby wanted to jump in the trampoline and who could blame him, such a beautiful day!!!!

 Taking a little break from jumping to enjoy the view...

I took video of jumping and his work session, but it won't let me upload to this blog?!  Maybe I'll get it on Facebook, maybe not!!!!