ARD meeting

I attended Megan's ARD meeting yesterday.  Her annual meeting will be in February every year but because of the disagreements at the last meeting and the need for additional data gathering we had one yesterday.

We reviewed Megan's final progress report for this year and it was noted that with the exception of 1 speech goal she has now mastered all of her goals.  She made tremendous progress in the past 11-12 weeks once she started really sleeping again and I stopped waking her up for school.  I let her sleep until she wakes up on her own and then take her to school and it has made a big difference in her demeanor.

Before we got into everything regarding her placement for next year (the reason for the meeting) I showed everyone her talker and how it worked.  I explained how she has been doing with it and we discussed getting it written into her IEP that she will have access to it at all times; but that she will be allowed to communicate however she chooses (verbalizing, sign language, pictures, talker).  Her teacher and therapists were all very interested in seeing it and want me to go ahead and let Megan take it with her to school next week even though there are only 4 days left.  After the meeting was over her teacher and 2 of her therapists played with it for 20 minutes or so.

It was determined that the classroom for next year will be the STACC room.  See below for the description of this room.  This is what she needs, a room that is centered around communication and correcting behaviors.  We are not positive we will send her but it is now an option (as opposed to the other class they wanted to put her in).

Structured Teaching Alternative Communication Class – STACC (Prerequisite Skills and Communication)

STACC classes are designed to provide a highly structured instructional program for students with Autism Spectrum disorders, or other disabilities, whose academic, communication and behavioral needs cannot be met in other settings.

The focus of this setting is to provide classes with the following features:

a. A high degree of classroom structure - physical, academic and behavioral.

b. Emphasis on the development of effective communication skills through direct

Instruction.

c. Management of behavior through an individualized Behavior Intervention Plan.

d. Social skills development.

e. Visual supports

Great day at school and home

Megan did really great at school today.  She finally showed them a little of what she can do.  She signed 'more' without any prompting whatsoever.  Her teacher said this is the first time she has signed anything without them prompting her in some way.  She also verbalized more for them today too.  Go Megan!

She did really well this afternoon despite not having a nap.  She even used her talker to ask for a drink without pointing and grunting at it first.  She has been pointing/grunting and then when I say "tell mommy drink" she will push drink.  Today she just reached over and pushed drink.

Talking, playing and stacking

Megan is continuing to babble so much more.  She is approximating more words on a regular basis and even saying some so well Sam understands what she said.  Yesterday she said "open it" after I had said it and this morning for the first time I got a very clear "no no". There was a solid "o" sound instead of it being more like "nah".

She is doing well with her talker when she wants to.  She uses it intentionally to tell us something and other times is still just playing with it.  I added her songs, body parts and some specific animals so that we can work on activities that she enjoys.

Megan is a little obsessed with stacking things lately - her blocks and our over sized shapes.  She gets excited that she has stacked them well and then she gets a little mischievous grin on her face right before she knocks them down.  She has always loved knocking things down and I think she is loving the fact that she doesn't have to wait for someone else to stack them up for her anymore.

More talking and using the talker

Megan has been babbling like crazy since we implemented her talker.  She is just chatting and all of the sudden she will say a word.  Words she has approximated in the past 3 days "morning, eat, hooray, yeah" and she has said "no, dada, yay".

She loves her talker so very much and will look for it if we haven't gotten it out for her yet.  She is using it purposefully to ask for a drink, to tell us she is hungry, ask us to sing songs, read her a book, play with the ball or blocks and to talk about daddy.

She is so excited to see it that she wants to hit it and shove it.  We are working hard to make sure this behavior doesn't become a habit and we tell her "gentle touch".  She understands and will control herself she just loves being able to ask me to sing songs to her and I understand what she wants.  

She said 'eat'

This morning Will was feeding Megan breakfast and modeling using the talker by pushing 'eat' and 'drink', etc.  At one point he pushed 'eat' and Megan said "eat".  Will said she just said eat, I think she just said eat.  I heard her too - she did say eat.  She is babbling a ton too - just chattering away since we started using the talker.

After breakfast she was checking it out and I used it to say it was time for school and she was very upset.  She loves school so I know this was about leaving the talker.  I will be calling her teacher today to see what we can do about getting it at school with her.

Eat, Eat, Eat, Eat and new dancing

About 20 minutes before dinner time Megan started pushing 'eat' on her talker.  She was kindof half-heartedly pushing words up until that point but she still didn't want to leave it to go play with toys.  She wants to be right at it at all times.  Anyway, so she kept saying 'eat'.  Granny was here visiting by that point and so I jumped up to cook dinner and I kept telling her I was working on it.  A few seconds later I would hear 'eat' again and then hear my mom telling her I was working on it.  

The girl meant business.  She said "hey, you gave me this thing and I get what I want when I push the right word and I WANT TO EAT!".  It was awesome!!!!

After dinner we continued working with her and she continued to not want to leave it.  She wanted to play with her dominoes so badly but she just couldn't bring herself to leave the talker.  We were finally able to entice her to play a few times for a couple of minutes.  While we were playing with her I showed her again where "sing" is located as it is a two push word.  As soon as I pushed the word I would begin singing a song and Megan was so completely beside herself happy that she could get me to sing by pushing the word that she was doing this side to side swaying back and forth with her arms outstretched and she would slap her hands on the floor on each side.  When I finished singing I helped her find the word again and she would start the new ecstatic dancing again with the biggest smile her on face.  She is LOVING being able to tell us "no I don't want to do that" or "I want to do this" or "sing to me mommy" etc and I LOVE that I get to hear what she wants too.  

Megan is "talking"

This morning when we got home from school Megan and Sam played in the toy room while I made lunch.  I then grabbed Megan's talker and went to get her out of the toy room.  I had opened the word 'eat' and pushed it while telling her it was time to eat.  I put the talker beside us during lunch and repeatedly pushed the 'eat' and 'drink' buttons while she was doing those activities.  I was modeling the behavior we want from her.

After lunch I took her into the toy room and she sat beside me with the talker.  She didn't want to go play with anything she just wanted to just it out.  I opened some animals so we could find them and hear what they were.  I had a toy in my hand and she would push go for me to activate it and then giggle when I would stop.  She pushed 'go' once without me saying "ready, set" first which is great.  She was checking out what words were on the screen and kept pushing 'play' and 'on'.  I added the word 'nap' and I said Megan are you ready for 'nap' and she pushed 'play'.  That is HUGE for her to be able to say (with one word at this point) no mommy I am not ready for nap I want to play more.  I did this with her 5 times over the period of about 10 minutes and sometimes she even responded with 'more play'; but every single time she answered me when I asked if she was ready for nap by telling me she wanted to keep playing.

I opened up a few more words for her so she could ask me to sing, which she loved doing and then I opened the words 'love' and 'dad'.  I then modeled saying 'love dad' for her a few times and she was so excited about it and then she signed 'love' and stroked my face.  I hadn't given her the option of 'mom' simply because I hadn't changed the picture to be me for that word yet, but she wanted to be able to say 'love mom' too.  My sweet, sweet little miss.

She was not happy to go to bed and leave her talker behind.  It was hard for me to put her in bed when she was so interested in it.  I love that she is excited about it.  We still have a long way to go but she is doing amazing.