Mands: 14

Back to phase I. Tony was ready to get down to business when I arrived this morning. He’d been awake since 7:00, so he needed a change of scenery. First we went out for a walk. It was only a little past 10:00, and already it was very hot! We headed out the door and to the left. As he charged up the mini hill of leaves I ran around the big tree to hide. We played ‘where’s Tony/ Parker’ a few times and then moved on towards the courtyard. He noticed a new addition to our outdoor landscape: there were many mulberries on the ground. He pointed at one and said “red.” I picked a few up and handed them to him, saying “mulberries.” I then said “let’s count!” And we did. Then inspiration must have struck, because I saw a light in his eyes and he exclaimed “wun!,” and ran full speed to the courtyard. As he passed through the opening between the bushes and the fence he threw all of the mulberries onto the ground and cheered.

Then . . . Whitney, can you guess his next destination? Yes, that’s right! He was off to the recycling bin for percussion and vocals! While we were out there, he manded for ‘go’ and ‘stop.’ He tacted our ‘shadows,’ which we worked on last week. A black SUV went by and it really sounded like Tony said “Look, it;s Jill!” Just as I said the other day when Jill really did drive by. After that, every vehicle that drove by evoked a string of “hi jill”‘s. He was getting upset that Jill didn’t materialize out of thin air. I had to distract him somehow, so I picked him up and ran over to a yard in which I knew there to be some rather large frog statues. “Wow! What are these?” I asked, pointing to the frogs. He tacted them correctly. Then we jumped and hopped on some square shaped stepping stones.

We then returned to the house and went into his room. Coloring was of high interest to him, and intraverbals were of very low interest. We put off the intraverbals to tact the colors of the crayons. Eventually I had to resort to taking things from him until he produced responses. It does feel a little mean, but sometimes it’s exactly what’s necessary to get our smart little one to focus. It certainly helped me cover much more ground than I would have with a more passive approach. Covering more ground results in more progress for Tony and more data for Jay.

Jill arrived while we were in his room, and she brought a friend with her named Elizabeth. After they left, Tony and I went back in the room and played/ worked some more. Then Marlaina got back from Myrtle Beach. Tony was really excited and asked me to open the door. While his Mommy made a phone call and a snack in the kitchen, he sat on a stool across the counter so she would be in his view. When his Mommy went into the living room, he too relocated. Daddy’d made him a cheese sandwich, so we watched Blue’s Clues while he grazed on his sandwich and relished in his Mother’s presence. After half of the show, Tony started saying “car” repeatedly. Marlaina and I took him for a short ride to Chick-fil-A for some fries.

We briefly worked on brushing his teeth and off/on with the light in the bathroom before going for a much longer car ride with Mom and Dad to look at a ’73 VW Bug! Fun!