Sat 25 Feb 2006
Hello. This is the first time I’ve blogged. Today is a dreary, rainy day but it started out sunny and nice. Tony started the day off in his room where we played with the kick ball. I would say “kick ball” and kick it across the room gently. He found this quite amusing. We quickly moved to coloring during which he tacted ‘moon’ when I drew one. I tried a tree, but he had no interest in looking at it, he manded for a ‘thinking chair’ and a ‘ball,’ both of which I drew for him. We played with the trains and then he was ready to go for a walk. We had lots of fun on the walk, starting off checking on the duck situation. No ducks at first, so we had fun throwing leaves into the water. Tony kept inching closer and closer to the pond and then I decided we should redirect our interest before we became fish food. We went to the courtyard, ran around, jumped, I pushed Tony in the hammock, then wemoved on. We walked over to someone’s bench and Tony tacted ‘chair,’ and then climbed up onto it. I tried some motor imitation and receptives. He put his hands to his cheeks, but quickly lost interest and said “all done.” I helped him jump over a green chain numerous times, having him say ‘jump’ each time. We also played on the tennis court with a tennis ball. As we were headed home, we saw Marlaina driving slowly around the parking lot. We climbed in and went to Publix to get some food in preparation for a visit from Marlaina’s parents and Morgan. Tony and I played in his room with the singing dog, the balls, the tunnel, and the trampoline. Tony was quite excited upon the arrival of his grandpatents and didn’t know exactly what to do with himself. Everyone was impressed with his attempts to say ‘grandaddy’ and ‘nanny.’ After they left Anton took Tony to bed. Night Night.
February 26th, 2006 at 8:59 pm
It’s important for him to learn both specific mands and a generalized mand for help. With this in mind, when you know that he doesn’t have a word for something (or know how to do something), you might say, “Do you need help?” or similar phrase with the word “help” in it, then provide echoic prompt for specific reinforcement and reinforced accordingly. THis way the word “help” gets paired with reinforcers, but he still learns specific mands (that he doesn’t already have in his repetroire). Good question Elizabeth.
With respect to Potato Head, I would recomend that we vary the Sd+ (like you are already doing). For example, one time we might ask him to “Do this” and wave her arm (imitation), and the next time we might ask him to perform a specific action without a model (receptive). It’s two different skills we are asking, but he should be able to respond to the subtle difference in language. If he has some difficulty, use prompting to assist, and as always, reinforce differentially (e.g., more reinforcement for better responses).
Everything else looks great. Keep up the good work with Tony.
Jay