Mands: 26

The weather is wonderful today and Tony is (thankfully) over his weekend long fight with diarrhea. (sp?) He was in a great mood for most of the day, so we took advantage of the good mood and the good weather and went on two long walks over the course of the day. It is funny how he willingly and readily does some things outside that he refuses to even try in the room. I think tomorrow I will bring phase II motor imitation and maybe some other learning activities outside and try to accomplish them. In his room today, I got a purple piece of paper, a purple foam square, and a purple lego block out, held these items in his line of vision and asked for a color tact. I must have asked him five different times with no response, not even an echoic! He told me what shape the purple piece of foam was, but he just didn’t want to say ‘purple.’ On the contrary, when we were out for our second walk, after the unsuccessful purple episode in his room, we walked up to a fragrant blooming wisteria. I asked him what they were and he made an approximation for ‘flower,’ (I will ask Jill how to improve it) then I asked him what color the flowers were and he happily spurted out “puhple” without hesitation!

We waded our way through some of phase II and hopefully we will get through the rest tomorrow. After speech he manded for a car ride. I tried to distract him with a pretend version in the bus, but he wouldn’t have it. Marlaina could see the situation could go downhill quickly without the reinforcer of an actual car ride, so she got the keys and we went. Upon our return, Tony ate some of his newly acquired french fries and watched an episode of Blue’s Clues. After his show was when our second walk took place. After he manded for ‘walk,’ we walked over to the gate at the entry of the hallway and stopped. I said “what do you want?” I was hoping for a two word mand; ‘jump over,’ which incorporates one of our phase II preposition tacts, I got a ‘jump,’ but I had to resort to echoics to get ‘over.’

It is easy to rack up the mands when you are playing with Tony in the bus. There’s ‘open door,’ ‘up,’ ‘down,’ ‘roll’ (window), and ‘shut’ or ‘close door.’ All of these are used repeatedly as he wants their effects accomplished. He can actually roll down the window himself now! While we were in the bus I sang a little bit of “Wheels on the Bus” and “If You’re Happy and You Know It” Tony performed the actions that went with the words but didn’t join in vocally. When we got out and shut the door I said “this way,” and held his hand, leading him to the left of the house torward the root-laden entrance to the courtyard. The whole time we walked, he said ‘this way’ again and again. So when we finally got into it, I said ‘that way,’ and started off in another direction. We covered alot of ground with our new ‘this way/ that way’ game, and he was tickled he could direct me so successfully. We stopped by an orange traffic cone and Tony put some sticks and leaves into it. As he dropped the objects into the hole in the top of the cone, I would say “you’re [or Tony’s] putting the STICK IN the CONE.” Then when he’d finished putting a few leaves and sticks in, I’d pick up the cone and move it about a foot to the side and say “now the leaves and styicks are OUT of the cone!” I knew he was getting tired because he was disturbed to the point of crankiness when he threw his turtle into some leaves and leaves stuck to the turtle. Luckily his tiredness was anticipated back at the ranch, where he had a new cup and transportation to his bed waiting on him!