Mon 12 Dec 2005
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.
December 13th, 2005 at 6:36 am
It sounds like Tony continues to build a verbal repetroire that is effective in labeling things in his environment (tacts), obtaining things he wants (mands), and responding verbally to verbal behavior of others (interverbals). These form the foundation of more complex verbal skills so it looks like we are headed in the right direction. Two points to think about. With tacts, we want to get them under stimulus control, meaning a specific stimulus (“What is that?” or similiar phrase) evokes verbal labeling of stimuli in the environment. To reach this goal, if Tony spontaneously names something in his environment (e.g., tree) without “What is that?” go back and ask him “What is that?” after he spontaneously labels it to see if he will label it under stimulus control……..IF not, prompt it with an echoic (e.g., say “tree”).
The other thing to ponder is having him do “fill ins” for nursury rhymes and other songs, as well as ABC’s, 123’s that he is currently developing. I know we don’t have an interverbal goal, but maybe we should. Typical fill-ins are Old MacDonald song, twinkle-twinkle, one-two-buckle-my-shoe, Jack and Jill, etc. ALso, interverbals can be developed by having Tony “finish” what you have started on simple associations like “lets go get your socks and _______” (shoes). With “ahh boom” and “ahh choo”, these are currently part mand and part interverbal, which is OK. I would continue to develop and reinforce these responses as well.
Keep up the good work with Tony therapists (and Mom and Dad as well)……….Take care.
Jay