Mands: 16

Tony had a fabulous morning in his room, starting while we looked at a National Geographic photography special magazine. First I flipped to a picture of an iridescent blue and purple butterfly. I asked him what it was, and after I prompted him echoically; ‘say butterfly,’ he gave it a try. Then I pointed to the blue half and prompted him to tact the color which he did. I had to ask three times while pointing to the purple side before he said purple pretty clearly. What was really remarkable was his adjective tact. I was flipping through our ABA notebook and the magazine and just about the time I saw the hot/cold category I spotted a picture of a fire. I said “Tony, this is a fire. Is it hot or cold?” He said “hot. hot, hot, hot.” I emphatically reinforced his correct and very clear answer.

While we were still in his room we started in on motor imitation, phase II. Tony almost too easily sailed through throwing a ball, kicking a ball, and making the tube long and then short. He wasn’t keen on shaking his head today, even when I tried it again later. He demonstrated his ability to do this once just to shut me up. He was reluctant to place the toy in the cart, but after we did it hand over hand I tried the ‘do this’ prompt and he did it! Yeah Tony! I guess he’s not ready for the dolls yet, at least not today – I just put them on the table so they could watch him play with legos (and to see if he would pick them up or take interest in them on his own,) but once he noticed they were on the scene he shoved them off the table with his arm.

We went for a short walk outside when Tony manded for ‘walk.’ It was very nice outside and we played in and around the bus. This is where we accumulated at least half of Tony’s mands for the day. During the walk I tried to do intraverbals with “If You’re Happy and You Know It,” He was more than willing to perform the actions but didn’t want to sing or fill in any blanks, even after lengthy hesitation. Any suggestions?

Another cool thing Tony did today was say ‘who’ clearly. He was looking for his turtle upstairs when we got back from the walk because he forgot it was already in his downstairs room. I went and got the turtle and was waiting to meet Tony at the bottom of the steps whith turtle behind my back. I said “somebody’s behind my back,” and jingled turtle in order to produce his unmistakeable sound. Then I said “I wonder . . .[hesitation] . . .Tony chimed in “who!” and I reinforced it by presenting him with turtle and saying “turtle!”