Wow, Tony was talking up a storm today! He manded “open”, “jump”, “all done”, “ahhh boom/choo”, “tickle”, “more” (when he wanted to eat and we always did the sign for “eat” or “cup”. He also tacted “tree” (twice), “book”, “ball”, “dada”, “Blue’s Clues”, “blue”, “black”, and “bubble”, and “duck”. Duck and ball were tacted from the cards and the rest from 3-D objects. We tried to tact “tv” (the object–he did do “touch the tv”) bc he really wanted the channel changed a lot and would say “all done”. I hope that he’ll start saying “tv” so that it won’t be so confusing when he says “all done”. Tony counted objects and approximated “seven”, “eight”, and said “nine”, “ten”. He also echoed the alphabet song and sounds when I stretched, played with a dinosaur, and spun him around like an airplane (he made the sound and also went “wweeeee”). He also echoed “pasta” (ahsta). Tony physically imitated stomping, drumming, and running with “do this”. He also walked in the right direction whenever I pointed and said “do this”. With “point to” I used hand-over-hand but with “touch the__” he responded well to this. Tony did the card matching using pics of spoon, cup, and car in three yellow containers. Tony made many sounds today and was very receptive/cooperative. Tony waved and said “hi” and “bye” to everyone. He slept in late bc of lack of sleep last night so we didn’t get a full session but in the short time that we had he was amazing!! One last thing to Jay, Tony isn’t matching the colors of the crayons, just putting them in line. But he did match the colors of his stringing beads last week.

This was another one of those days where Tony was pretty hyper and it was hard to keep him on task (its harder to work later during the day usually). I did letters with Tony and tried to get him to say each letter before I gave it to him because he was making a stack of them. He did really well and tried to sound out each letter except for the harder ones like “W” and “L”. We also did “jump” and “ahh boom.” Tony actually started manding for jump spontaneously which was cool and holding his arms up in the air. We did “jump” a few times and then he started jumping up and down by himself…he also did this later on with “bounce” as he bounced himself on his rubber ball. The highlight of the evening was definitely when Tony was eating his pasta. We only put a little on his tray and then Tony started manding very clearly for “more.” I can him two more scoops and he counted “one” “two” “three” with every spoonful I gave him. He continued to eat and kept signing for more so of course I gave him more saying “more pasta.” I kept repeating “pasta” and “mm..pasta.” The third time Tony signed for more he said “aahsta!” I of course gave him verbal praise and immediately delivered the pasta. Tony said pasta probably about 5 or 6 more times….he was smiling and shaking his head as he ate too. It was pretty cool…so I guess this is a good word we can start to use for meal time. Yeh for Tony!

I didn’t post for Wed so I will give a brief summary. Tony did some intraverbals such as “A, B, __” and he clearly said “C”. Also, he did do some motor imitation to “do this” with stomping and drumming. We were unable to tact any cards but we did do some 2-D matching. Tony was rather hyper (and really into his crayons) but since he was in a really great mood we were able to get a little accomplished.

Okay, today was wonderful. In the beginning Tony’s attention was slightly diverted but we still completed “do this” motor imitation with stomping, clapping, drumming, and rolling. I used puzzle pieces for Tony to tact and for the receptives. As soon as he saw the ball he yelled “ball!”. I used a physical prompt for “touch the ball”. When I pulled out the puzzle piece of the cow and said “touch the cow”, Tony did it. Later on we used squish balls and other 3-D objects and Tony touched the objects when I said “touch the __”. We also worked on “point to the __” but this was less successful. He tacted a lot today, saying bubble, ball, choo-choo (also manded these). He manded “open”, “all done”, and “no”. When we were counting beads on his wire toy and doing some intraverbal he approximated “seven” and said “eight, nine, ten”. Nine and ten were very clear and he said them when he was on the correct numbers. Tony matched his cards very well today using three yellow boxes and changing up the cards after he matched them. Tony picked up some crayons and became fixated so in order to keep him on task I got some more crayons and rewarded him with one when he matched correctly to “put with same”. Tony also peeled stickers and we did “touch your__” with the “head, shoulders…” game. Tony was just really focused at the middle to end of the session so we kept going past 1pm.

We had a pretty good week as far as speech tx. is concerned. Lots of engagement and eye contact which is more than great! Tony has continued to exhibit tons of verbal imitation with novel words and sounds. He is able to consistently match identical pictures in a field of 9 with at least 8/9 accuracy. He has been pretty easily redirected at times when he was getting fussy. I am constantly impressed with Tony and the reflections of everyone’s hard work! This blog sounds kind of blah…I don’t have much energy left tonight! See you guys next Monday! ~jill

Today I came late so our day was unfortunately cut short. Tony was still sleepy so we moved slowly. I worked on motor imitation with rolling his car and also tried to work in tacting “shoe” and “book.” Although he didn’t tact it exactly, he did echo “shoe” really well as well as “block” later on. He did great with manding for “bubbles” and “open” as usual. Before I could get to the match to sample trials Tony started whining to go outside. I took him out and we did work on “touch tree.” I saw Tony going after the tree in the center of the back so before he touched it I said “touch tree.” We also did “jump” “ahh boom” and “fall down” outside. I also tried a new motor imitation “do this” and I jumped up with my hands in the air (I really just did this because my arms were tired from jumping Tony…so I thought he could try and jump on his own). Tony imitated me on the first trial and I followed with tickles and verbal praise. Soon after, Tony picked up a leaf on his own (he used to be afraid of them) and paraded around with it for a few minutes while I said “leaf” “hey, Tony, you have a leaf.” So then he walked over to another different kind of leaf and picked it up and I said “ohh another LEAF, Tony.” He then ran over to a small bush and put his hands all over the leafy branches and totally said ‘leaf.” It was great. We also worked on “lets run” where I would get Tony to run after me. Marlaina came outside to tell us she was going to Chick-fil-A and since Tony loves the car so much we all decided to go and get yummy gluten-free waffle fries..yum. Tony had speech after eating and I got to sit in on one of Jill’s sessions (which I’ve never really gotten to do before). Jill is so great at manipulating Tony’s playtime and integrating the therapy. I really learned a lot in just an hour of watching her work. My time was short with Tony today but hopefully next time I’ll get more done.

Today we (Elizabeth, Marlaina and I) had another meeting with Jay. (Don’t worry Elizabeth, I am blogging for you). We went over some more ABA training materials and focused on receptive trials and tacting drills. We decided that since Tony has not been doing well with the cards on the receptive trials, we decided to focus on doing more work with objects (i.e. “touch..*object*” instead of “touch…*picture card*”) We also decided on using the commands “touch” and “point to.” We will still be using the cards but will be using them with Tony by presenting them one-by-one and identifying each object as we go along. This way, Tony will be able to pair the verablization of the object with the picture card and once that is accomplished we can move on to tacting the cards and doing the receptive trials. Jay is such a great listener and full of ideas. I think we all feel lucky to have him.

Today was another good day with Tony. He did really well with motor imitation when we did “stomp” and “bang drum” and then also worked on manding with “jump” “bubbles.” I tried doing match to sample with the balls and lizards and Tony wasn’t really into this activity but nevertheless he did finally end up chucking the ball near the matching one! I also worked with Tony on drawing on his new activity box with his marker. I did “do this” and drew a line. Although Tony couldn’t draw a line completely independently, he was definitely making an attempt. He was listening and seemed very focused. Tony also did a really cool thing with his toy phone. He picked it up and pressed a few of the buttons and put it up to his ear like a real phone! How cool! So I asked, “Can you say hello?” He put it back to his ear and said “Hello!” pretty clearly. It was really cool. The pretend play has definitely been obvious over the past few weeks..how exciting!

Happy Monday! Elizabeth pretty much touched on the biggest things that we did today, so I’ll just say a few things! One of the most awesome things that I saw today was Tony’s concentration, especially with the big foam blocks I brought out. Not only was he focused on the toys, but he was focused on me! Very cool. I thought it was especially great when Dad left the room to show Elizabeth Tony’s room (which looks great by the way!). I thought for sure that Tony would leave as soon as Dad left, but he didn’t! He remained very focused on the task (keeping a watchful eye on where Dad was at all times, of course). We missed Mom this morning, but I think it was good for Tony to have to adjust to one of his parents not being there, which he did perfectly! I loved that he asked for Mom and looked for her every time the door opened. Although it wasn’t nice to see him screech when Elizabeth walked in…he sought comfort when he was upset and it wasn’t necessarily from a parent…which I feel is a huge thing.

I’ve found myself looking forward to Mondays (which is odd, I know). But that’s the day I get to spend one incredible hour with Tony. I get so excited to see what he’s doing this week and thinking about what he WILL be doing in the weeks to come. Even though I know that everyone involved is working extremely hard for Tony, I think Tony’s working the hardest out of anyone. I’m so proud of him and all that he’s accomplished in the past few months. What a tough kid! I hope everyone has a good week. See you all soon!

As soon as I walked into the door Tony screeched. This was not a good sign. Actually Tony was fine after that but he walked to the gate and tried to climb over it. When he couldn’t he threw his cup over the gate and looked around. He really wanted someone to take him over it. Before this he also walked around calmly saying “mama” several times, looking for her. You could see that he was a tired, too. Tony then continued to play with Megan (EI) who was already here. Tony really worked well with Megan. He stacked and lined up blocks, sometimes saying “ta-da” and “uh oh” or clapping. Tony also played well with a shape sorter. When they moved on to the Mr. Potato Head Tony said “ear”, “eye”, and correctly put the body parts in the right places. He also manded “open” a lot so that Megan would open the compartment on the toy. He also requested this later when he wanted a crayon peeled, or a book opened, or the drawer on the Magna Doodle opened. Tony requested “all done” several times too, along with “bye bye” and the sound for “night, night”. He tried to lie on the floor a couple of times and he rubbed his eyes. Despite this, we did some matching using three cards at a time (spoon, shirt, car). Tony matched them on his first attempts. We did this activity twice. Tony also tacted the picture of a ball by saying “ball” and with the dog card made a sound somewhat like “dog”. But when I said “show me” with a pic of cat or turtle I didn’t get a response right away so I also pointed. Still nothing so I took Tony’s hand and touched the pics and said the words. In the short time we had Tony did a great job imitating sounds I made, from “choo, choo” to animal and car sounds. When I tried to get Tony to tact “turtle” he put his hand to his mouth and moved his mouth while making a slight sound, like he was trying. He also imitated movements. Tony requested “tickle” a lot so we did that and played “head, shoulders, belly….” We worked on the mand for “cup” but briefly. Tony usually just looked at me while I signed/said it so I prompted him. So, even though Tony was really sleepy and we didn’t work as long as usual, we did work on a few things.

Today was a little rough with Tony because of all the construction work going on outside (if only he knew). The noise was distracting, there was a lot of activity, and also Tony really wanted Anton to be inside. He kept walking up to the back door and saying “dada” and walking around. He was whining in the beginning so Morgan and I took Tony outside. I tried to work on the verbalization “walk” when we got outside but Tony was upset and distracted because Anton was leaving to get wood at the store at the same time. Once we got a little down the sidewalk Tony calmed down and actually started counting his steps. I worked on “jump” and “ahh boom” outside but Tony kept wanting to go over to the grate where he lost his puzzle pieces a couple weeks ago. I redirected him using “jump” and we did “fall down” when we got on the other side of the yard. As soon as we did “fall down” Tony immediately ran back over to where the grate was and started whining when I scooped him back up. He looked at Morgan and signed and said “all done” while he was crying. We went back inside and Tony took 5 for awhile so he could calm down and eat some waffle. We got back on track about 15 min. later. I asked Tony if he’d like to sing the “head shoulder-knees-toes song” and he stated doing the motions and then sounds of the song. So we did the song and I got Tony to echo “toe” “head” and “knees” (I think shoulders is a little hard).

We did bubbles. I tried manding with the bubbles but Tony didn’t verbalize until I had blown the bubbles…so more of a tact but nonetheless good. For motor imitation “do this” we did stomp feet as well as clap hands..Tony did both on the first try. I worked on the cards with tacting and Tony successfully identified “ball” out of the cards but he was fading by this time….rubbing his eyes and all. I didn’t get to match to sample today but I didn’t want to throw him into fit since he was getting irritable. So today was hard because Tony seemed out of sorts with all the action going on at the house but I feel like it was still an OK day given the circumstances.