Fri 25 Nov 2005
Okay, so I walk in the door and Tony’s eating a waffle. He looks and smiles, then later says and waves “hi” to me. After that I only got a little accomplished. 30mins after I started working/playing with Tony he tells me “all done”. He was getting upset so we went outside. Tony had a great time and if I said “Tony, this way” and pointed my finger he actually followed me. I did this three times to see if it was a coincidence but each time he did it. We played a few games (aah, boom, wake up, feet stomp) and we ran around until two dogs came running into the park. Of course I snatched up Tony and said “see the dogs”. Tony held out his hand and made a sound for “dog”. Inside Tony made the sound for “open” when he needed the cellophane removed from his new book and when he wanted a toy from a closed box. Tony did imitate when I said “do this”. He imitated stomping and running. He didn’t sign or say “cup” when he wanted his drink. Tony was really irritable today so he whined on/off throughout the day. Tony told me “all done” a lot. He had been awake since 6:30am (didn’t sleep well) so he was just tired and took a nap early. I am trying to push Tony a little with the mands so I’ll see how it goes Mon. just to see if I need to change my approach.
November 26th, 2005 at 5:50 pm
Elizabeth,
Nice job with the mands! I would continue to try to develop these by using signs and providing more reinforcer for better vocal approximations. Don’t focus on too many mands, sounds like open, cup, eat might be ones that we could get fluent before moving on………mands are critically important for future language developement and we should make sure the ones we are working on are fairly solid before adding more. It sounds like he had a rough day on the 25th but kids are like adults….we all have our good and bad days which may be related to sleep, etc. I’m really amazed at how well he is coming…..you guys are natural teachers!! Keep up the good work.
Jay