Mands:20

Today Tony got two new pools. The first one was defective and will be returning to the store sometime soon. We were having a mellow day, playing with markers, crayons, blocks, chalk, turtle, cup, and two Blue (the dog) stuffed animals. I decided to try to inject an ‘and’ into the turtle/ cup mand. I learned the procedure for just such an occasion in the ABA/ Verbal Behavior seminar I was lucky enough to attend this past weekend! Thank you Jay! It was wonderful; lots of great ideas! When two mands are strung together without an ‘and,’ simply treat the lack of an ‘and’ as an ‘or.’ In this case, give Tony just one: the turtle or the cup. When he receives only one of his desired reinforcers the motivation is there to learn the ‘and,’ all we need to provide is the echoic prompt. It is easier to teach things when they are functional for the learner.

Tony really enjoys when I pretend one of the Blue stuffed animals is smelling him. Until today he has been using a sound effect similar to mine to mand for this action. Of course this was confusing for other people, so today I started to change this mand to a more functional ‘sniff Tony.’ I got a pretty good approximation echoically. Eventually we will lengthen it to ‘Blue sniff Tony!’ Woo-hoo!

You blog readers already know the news about Tony spouting out a very good approximation for “Oh no, are you okay?” on a regular basis, but the latest development is now his similarly close approximation of “where did it go?,” and “Oh, there it is!” Our little future conversationalist is making us so proud!

Marlaina, Morgan, Tony and I went for a car ride this morning. We went to the bank and the grocery store. I guess time really does fly when you’re having fun, because we were having so much fun we were late for speech! Upon our arrival we were greeted by Jill and Anton who were both eager to help unload the groceries. Thanks guys.

Tony went into his room with Jill and had what seemed like a very happy speech session. He was ready for some rhythm now, but Spot the dog was not ready for his cage to be turned into a percussion instrument, especially while he was inside. We let Spot escape from this torture. Now Tony wanted to crawl in. Since his tunnell is of similar construction and you can crawl inside it, he was easily talked into this alternative.