Thu 1 Dec 2005
OK, so today was another really good day with Tony. He was in such a good mood when I came in. Today, Elizabeth and I met with Jay and we started the beginnings of our new ABA book. Needless to say, I had a LOT to work on! We did a lot of things outside because it was still light out so we went for a walk. Tony said “outside” en I asked him if he would like to go on a walk. Should we be switching “walk” under mands to outside, Jay? After we got outside, Tony was actually holding MY hand which has never happened before (I usually have to hold his wrist while we are near the street). I would point and say “Tony, this way.” When we got to the back area we worked on running (“Lets run!” while Tony would run after me), jumping (“what do you want?” ..resp=jump!), and I also did the wake-up game (which I had never tried myself before). Tony did great with all of these things…especially running because Tony was so hyper today. I also did “fall down” outside while I would run and fall down and Tony would laugh (he didn’t imitate me by falling down but he did do the fall down hand motion).
Inside, Tony was bouncing all over the place. I worked on receptives with the cards and as I feared, Tony only wanted to hold the cards. Nevertheless I still worked through all the cards doing hand-over-hand so that Tony would touch the card and then I would give verbal praise/tickles (I used “Touch____” as the antecendent instead of “show me” ..hope that’s OK). I went back outside with Tony to do bubbles. I had picked up Tony and had him on my waist when I picked up the jar of bubbles off the self and he said “bubbles” when I picked up the container. I thought that was pretty cool. When we got outside I had Tony mand for bubbles which he did perfectly.
I also worked on “bounce” for Tony’s manding and we did motor imitation using “do this” with beating the drum. At this point Tony was getting tired and was losing focus. So I did the “hands, shoulder, knees, toes” playing special attention to “toes” which Tony was echoing really well. I also tried playing peek-a-boo with Tony a little different today. I used my hands and placed his hands over mine over my face and then I would take my hands and pull our hands away from my face and say “peek-a-boo!” Tony loved it and he caught right on…he put his hands over mine with no prompting and then he would push my hands apart and say “peek-a-boo.” I reversed the role afterwards doing hands over Tony’s face which he also liked.
So, I got a lot accomplished this session, even though he was very wound up for most of the session.
December 1st, 2005 at 8:14 pm
Nice job Whitney. It sounds like you have already got started cranking on some of the objectives. Regarding your question about the receptive Sd+ “Touch____” and “Show me”, either one of these would be fine. In fact we want to teach Tony to respond correctly to many ways people say the same thing (another fact that makes the english language so complex). My recommendation would be to use these Sd+’s and mix them up so that he learns to respond correctly to either way it is presented.
With respect to the “outside” mand, you may want to reinforce this mand by going outside, then immediately upon getting outside prompt the “walk” mand (before beginning to take the walk)…..this procedure would make the mands more specific to reinforcement provided. I understand that Tony may exhibit several mands that we did not target today, and I certainly want you guys to reinforce those mands, and please make note of them so that we can give him “credit”.
Good luck……..
Jay