Blog Hop! New Accomplishment Edition

OK, I'm going to try something new here, that I've seen several of my new bloggy friends doing. It's a special needs blog hop! Today's theme: New Accomplishment For Your Child. (Though if this works, it's a new accomplishment for me too, so double the blog-hoppy goodness I would say.)




Joy has picked up an adorable new skill recently.

I learned about it the other day when I let loose a tremendous sneeze.

Joy came bounding over, saying "BEH boo! BEH boo!"

Bless you too, kiddo!

Ah, but there's more. Next time I caught her in a sneeze, and told her "Bless you!" -- she responded, "GEH goo!"

Any guesses as to what that one was?

Behavior as Communication

Given the way that September 1st and Labor Day hit this year, the first week of school had only three days; the second week had only 4; and it wasn't till this past week that we really had a full-fledged 5-day school week.

I think Joy's starting to realize that school is for real, not just a temporary state of affairs. She's not entirely thrilled about the new normal, and she's showing it in less-than-ideal ways any time she has to do something she doesn't want to do. Like, for example, get dropped off for the day to begin. The other day she was fine until I parked the car at the school. Then she tried to chomp me when I unbuckled her carseat. When her special ed teacher greeted her at the door, and said "hi," Joy responded with an angry "bye-bye!" Then she made no less than four swat/bite attempts on the way down the hallway to the locker.

Joy's schedule during the day is heavily modified, with one-on-one attention at all times. She's with the class for only a few times during the day -- part of the morning welcome routine, lunch, some recess, some afternoon free-time. In general, though, the classroom and its occupants are pretty much overwhelming for her. She even eats morning snack separately, for now at least. Otherwise she bolts her food so fast that she finishes long before anyone else, and then gets upset that the other students still have food but she doesn't.

Joy's unwelcome behaviors (biting, swatting, hair pull, etc.) are mostly happening in pretty clear communicative contexts: she's being asked to do something she doesn't want to do. Like, enter the danged school building in the first place. Alas, it's not just a matter of teaching her more appropriate ways to communicate her displeasure (tell us "all-done" instead of biting, for example). Unfortunately, whether she bites or (in our dreams) politely says, "No thank you," we can't honor the communication/request. She's still got to enter that building, go to her locker, etc. So there's not really any percentage in it for her to switch communication, because she's still not going to get what she wants. Sigh.

At least she got to get out and have fun for a while yesterday at the annual church campout. As has been the case the past two years, we had an almost-didn't-go scenario. This year, the weather was the wild card. Saturday morning JoyDad and I awoke at 4am to this stuff pounding down:


Can't believe that Joy & Rose slept through it, though they both woke with the thunder half an hour later and I'm not sure either of them got any further sleep.

Though the forecast for Saturday was threatening, the rain held off well enough that Rose & I went out to join the campout gathering after lunch, where she ran around on the trails with her friends, and I got to toss a frisbee around with some of our congregation's Ultimate Frisbee players. JoyDad brought Joy out for the potluck supper part of the event, and she happily ran up and down the path to the group campsite, stopping to play with stones and acorns.

We didn't stay for the singing around the campfire this year to see if Elvis would make an appearance -- too wiped out from the previous night's poor sleep. Those who did stay got their tents rained on overnight, so I think we made the right call. We'll hope to be able to stay over at next year's event, depending on what's going on with Joy (and with us) a year from now. I wonder what she'll have to tell us by then, either directly or indirectly.

Explanations

When I was a kid, one of the most anxiety-producing situations for me was when I felt that I didn't know what was happening. (Still true, in fact...) I needed things to be explained, laid out, with some idea of what to expect. One bright-edged sample memory dates from a community Easter-egg hunt when I was maybe about Rose's age. Mom dropped me off, a nice organizer lady told me to go stand on the far side of a big gym full of people I didn't know, I had no idea if I was standing in the right place, and I didn't know what was going to happen next. The memory still makes my stomach clench.

Rose likes explanations too.

We experienced this with her earlier in the week as we began to work our way through a sad event at our house. When JoyDad came downstairs to feed the bunnies first thing on Wednesday morning, he found that there was only one bunny to be fed. The senior of our two bunnies, Phoebert, had died unexpectedly in the night, at the ripe old age of 11.

Phoebert was Rose's favorite, though she loves Ellie too. We had to quickly plan how to tell her, how to arrange a bunny-body to let her see (opting for a cardboard box lined with a towel), how to comfort her. She has been doing really well, all things considered. I think this is partly due to the fact that we had to work through a much more serious decline and loss in 2005, when Rose was three and my mother died of kidney cancer.

However, JoyDad and I did have to decide what to do with a bunny body. The ground is frozen hard this time of year, so burial was not an option. We didn't much like the thought of putting him in the deep-freeze till spring. So... um... we bagged his remains in multiple layers and put the bag into the trash bin, which is its own kind of deep-freeze this time of year.

We were really hoping not to have to tell Rose, that she would let us get away with saying that it's mommy's job to take care of and you don't have to worry about it. Yeah, right. Guess what was the first thing she asked when I picked her up from school?

"Is Phoebert still in the house?"

I tried one feeble "you don't really want to know" attempt, and then told the truth. She seemed pretty philosophical about that part of it, though she did cry herself to sleep that first night. She's been thinking about Phoebert and Ellie a lot, but no more tears since.

So. That leaves someone else in the house who is in a very different place in terms of explanations.

What in the world do we do for, and with, Joy?

For the most part, we have had to keep her away from the bunny enclosure. The poops look like raisins (acck), she stims on the hay and spreads it everywhere, she rattles the cage. The bunnies were just not very much a part of her life.

We don't even know if it makes a difference to her that there's only one bunny she's being kept away from now, and not two.

Which totally begs the question of talking about death. Our verbal communications with Joy are generally so stripped down, in accordance with the Hanen precepts of speaking with a child using language that is not TOO far above the level you want them to aim at producing. We usually speak to her extremely concretely, about objects in the immediate present and actions in the immediate present or very near future.

Bunny is gone. Bunny is dead. Bunny is not coming back. This is different than when a therapist doesn't show up for an expected session, or when we have a personnel change, or when a friend moves away.... oh dear, that's a lot of words.

Good grief, it's hard enough to explain to a neurotypical kid!

On the one hand, we're lucky in a way that Joy rolls with the punches of change, at least seems to do so, much more than a lot of kids on the spectrum. She doesn't explode at changes in routine, though if we change too much at once she does get frayed around the edges (like any kid).

But it makes it hard to know how much she even notices. And how much explaining we need to be doing, which may be more than we are doing, just because we don't know how much explanation is helpful.

This is not easy. I don't like not knowing if I'm standing in the right place, not knowing what's going to happen next.

I do know that we'll miss our bunny.

Phoebert
1999(?)-2010

Four Responses

Joy has developed four different positive responses for one particular request.

• She tucks her chin down and presents the top of her head.
  
  
• She leans in and presents one side of her face.
  
  
• She doesn't incline her head at all, but makes a puckery motion and sound with her mouth.
  
  
• Or - rare but lovely - she leans in and turns up her mouth with a puckery smile.

Kiss for mommy? Kiss for daddy? Kiss your big sister?

We don't know why she chooses any given response at any given time. But it's almost always one of these, especially at bedtime when it's part of the routine. Melts us into our shoetops. What a sweetheart.

Beyond Compare

We've had a couple of neat things with Joy lately.

We've been hearing a lot of "uh-oh" again. Last night I was up for a while during the wee small hours, and heard Joy speak a big loud "UH-OH" from her bed, followed by a manic giggle. And then silence...

There are a lot more attempts and variations with the "more" sign recently. One particularly charming variation is to grab the hands of whatever adult is torturing is working with her at the moment, and bring that person's hands together to make the sign.

Joy loves to stim on hair-combs, and now that she's got enough hair to actually comb again, we've been trying to get her to actually use the comb a little bit. And, wonder of wonders, she's actually occasionally bringing the comb to her head and swiping a bit, with encouragement!

Joy is five years and four months old.

=========

Joy's seven-year-old sister Rose was saying "uh-oh" at 8 months.

She was starting to use the "more" sign at 10 months.

And there was a startling moment at 10 months where I, on a whim and not having tried to teach her at all, handed Rose a hairbrush and asked her, "What do we do with this?" She responded by bringing it to her hair. I was amazed at how she'd simply picked that up... amazed at the course of human development... amazed that I'd not had to explicitly teach her at all.

Such a different trajectory. It's almost like there's no comparison.

=========

As if it's helpful to compare. I don't do it all that often. We haven't been forced into it lately by any of those assessments that slap a time frame ("operating at the level of an X-month-old") onto Joy's achievements, or lack thereof.

I try to blog "in the moment." If I'd cut off this post before the "she's five years and four months old" line, it would fit that framework nicely.

I'm learning about developmental screening tools now, though. And getting a bit of review of "typical" development. And how our kids get put into the boxes that get them the help they need, by getting compared against the norm as best the experts know it.

Also, it's not fair to Rose to try to forget about her achievements and how we rejoiced in all the things she could do, so early, so very early on.

It's a balancing act, spinning plates aside.

How does one get to "beyond compare"?

Monday Numbers

Hey, Kia! Are you doing Monday Mum-mum-numbers this week?

Well, whether you are or not, I am!

• 94 - number of miles I've run since I started keeping count in February. Will hit 100 this week!
  
  
• 2 - number of times I've already had to raise my way-too-modest fundraising goal for Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure. You guys rock. Your new challenge - make me do it again!!
  
  
• 1 - number of bell concerts Saturday night.
  
  
• 2 - number of standing ovations (one for the full group, one for an awesome duet played by 2 of our members!)
  
  
• 3 - number of bells I got to ring simultaneously in ONE hand during a certain passage in Bach's Little Fugue
  
  
• 1 - mylar helium fish-balloon I brought home from the concert decorations for the girls.
  
  
• 100 - percent of her time that Joy spent playing with the balloon and its lovely stringy ribbon yesterday until we hid it away.
  
  
• 7 - handwritten coupons received from Rose yesterday for Mothers Day
  
  
• 2 - coupons I have already redeemed (hugs and a big ol' room-cleaning - yes, this mama is hard-core! I helped her with the room though.)
  
  
• 4 - weeks we technically have to test out the 7-Level-Communicator, a voice-recorded communication device that's a big step up from Joy's push-button.
  
  
• 1 - number of days it took Joy to figure out the new tool. Wow.
  
  
• 5 - number of times Joy went to jump in her bouncy castle with her playdate friend on Tuesday.
  
  
• 0 - level of enthusiasm she'd had for the bouncy castle last year when it was her big birthday present. This is a major improvement!
  
  
• 32 - number of pieces of sports equipment in the kit I got Friday from Special Olympics, for their Young Athletes family program that we'll be doing this summer at home.
  
  
• 3 - number of list-items in this post (at least) that deserve blog-posts of their own.
  
  
• 14 - cups of rhubarb that went into the deep freeze yesterday from our one prolific plant.
  
  
• 5 - names I'm aware of for the flowering bush that we planted yesterday: serviceberry, Juneberry, saskatoon, shadberry, Amelanchier.
  
  
• Gazillion - blossoms on the apple tree in our back yard.
  

Oh, and half a gazillion dandelions in the lawn to go with 'em. At least the yellow is bright and cheery against the green grass!

Update: Ooo, forgot an important one.

• 8 - number of months since Joy's last knock-down seizure, as of today. Woo hoo! (And, knock on wood!)

Let's Jump! or, All Done?

In the wake of a couple of big Joy meetings recently (Agency 2 and also IEP), we've been upping the ante a little bit on her photo-communication. Some neat stuff to share.

First, we've added an "all-done" card into the mix. Her cards have all been photos so far, but this one is a Boardmaker image that has a line-drawing showing a person making the "all-done" sign.

Until now, we've been able to offer choices between two photos, but haven't given her a similar means of choosing/communicating that she's finished with a toy or activity. But now, let's say we're out on the deck with the trike. She's played with it a while, then gotten up. Now we can swoop in and ask the question: "More trike? Or, all done?"


Then if she picks "all done", we abandon the trike and set up another choice between two or three different options.

The other thing that we've been trying is a single-button communication device. The parent/barista/whomever records a word or phrase on the device. Then Joy "says" that word herself by pushing the button and activating the playback. She'd used it with some success at daycare for things like "more" at snacktime and "my turn" when the group played games (they'd pass the button around and have other kids say "my turn" in the same way).

New twist at home is using the photo cards to indicate what pressing the button will "say".


So there's the button, with a velcro on it to hold a photo card.

I was worried that Joy would want only to pull the photo card off the button, since that's how she communicates with photo cards using the binder. And in fact, she did try that at first. However, she learned within maybe two days that when a photo was on the button, you pushed instead of pulling. Clever girl!

One of our favorite button-requests is "Let's jump!" Joy loves to grab an adult's hands and get them to help her jump to impossible heights. Lately she's even been putting little cheerleader kicks and splits into her jumps! If the button is programmed and available, though, we're nudging her to "ask" with the button.

I saw such a button used to very cool effect last year when Rose sang with the other kindergarten and first-grade classes at school. There were a coveted few speaking parts that had been doled out among the first-graders. One of the first-graders who "spoke" a part did so by means of a push-button switch! Powerful stuff.

Rose (who had one of the speaking parts in this year's concert) has gotten involved in programming the button too. It's lovely to hear Joy speak with her sister's voice.

More to say? Nah. All done!

Updates and Downdates

Doesn't it always seem to be a bit of cognitive dissonance when an "economic UPdate" comes on the TV or whatever, and then the news is all about how things are spiraling DOWN?

Anyway. We've got both ups and downs here, so we got both updates and downdates.

UPDATE: Rose is feeling much better. She went to school on Monday, only a little worse for the wear (achy muscles from all the hurling). Cute Rose story from yesterday: we were in the car on the way home from piano lesson and she asked me, "Did men always used to have to have short haircuts?" I started an answer about how it wasn't that you had to have short hair, it was just...

"Tradition!" she supplied from the back seat. I chuckled and told her what a grown-up girl she was, that that was exactly the right word.

"Yep," she replied smugly. "I'm a human dictionary!"

That's my girl! A chip off the ol' OED!

UPDATE: Joy's "more" sign has persisted this week. She's not using it at every opportunity, but we're still seeing it occasionally. She also seems to have retrieved her old sign for "all-done," which consists of self-applause. Which makes sense, because what do people do when you finish an achievement? They applaud and praise you! She used it remarkably well at Tuesday lunch, when I was around the corner as she finished the food she wanted to eat. I heard the clapping and came running, and she was absolutely telling me she wanted to be done. And then I told her that she needed to eat a few more bites of ham before I'd let her get away with being "all-done." Heh. Little stinker.

DOWNDATE: Sigh. This one harkens back to my Rules post the other week, in which I ranted about the ridiculous conditions and hoops to jump through to get 3 months worth of House Blend therapy (at 4 hours per week) at our fabulous daycare. Our daycare lady, Lynda the Wonder Woman, provides just an ideal setting for therapist work, and is a full member of our team. The daycare setting provides Joy with the opportunity to work on generalizing goals that she's been working on at home, into her "home-away-from-home" setting where she gets to interact with more peers.

Well. The response came back last week.

They said that in the next 90 days, we could have FOUR of our 4-hour therapy weeks. We're to sprinkle them throughout the 3 months as we see fit, but the emphasis should be on training Lynda so that we can fade out the need to have the therapy at the daycare at all.

This is not a decision made with Joy in mind, or with any clinical basis in the situation. This is a bean-counter decision, made in service of an apparent crackdown on therapy hours outside of the home in general.

ALL kids need structure, and stability, and routine. Kids on the spectrum have an even greater need for structure, and stability, and routine.

So, let's jazz things up at daycare, shall we, with 4 hours of therapy in week 2 of twelve, and then we'll take two weeks off, and then we'll have another week with 4 hours of therapy, and then we'll take three weeks off...

You see what I mean. That kind of approach isn't particularly kind to barista-schedules either, might I add.

It looks like our only sensible option is to take all four weeks consecutively, starting next week. And then we're out. No more therapy at daycare. No further venue of appeal, other than the committee that handed down the decision to begin with.

Well, our particular case might not be appeal-able, according to the rules that are apparently being re-written and tightened as the months go by. But when the rules are THAT BAD, maybe someone needs to do something to get those rules changed in the right direction....

Will keep you posted. If I need help, I'll let you know that too. Not quite sure what form this will take yet.

Just for Today, She Signed the Word "More"

We've seen it a couple of times recently.

Today it was unmistakable at lunch. Joy wanted more Kix. (What, you don't feed your children delicious nutritious breakfast cereals at lunch? C'mon!!) And when her portion was done, she very deliberately gave herself her own little fist-bump, the sign for "more" that has come and gone over the months, and come and gone. Who knows if it will be here tomorrow. Or even this evening.

Just for today, she's chewing the bejammers out of her super-strength chewy-toy. This overwhelming need to chew came back two or so weeks ago, I think. She's also leaving it clipped onto her shirt today. The last phase of super-chewing, she would let Lynda clip the chewy onto her at daycare, but would pull it off in a second at home. Who knows if she'll need to chew tomorrow, or if she'll leave the clip on.

Just for today, she's been pushing some boundaries. Climbing onto the toy chest to get to the TV. Climbing onto the glider-rocker in the living room, which she never used to do. Most of the time she's responding well to a voice-prompt of "Joy, down!" But who knows if she'll climb tomorrow, or if the voice-prompt will work tomorrow.

This weird uncertainty, this not knowing when the switches and sliders on Joy's mixer board will flip and slide, is making it a challenge to write her IEP, her Individualized Education Plan for the upcoming school year. Her school-district team leader commented to me the other day, after having combed through months of daily reports, that there are lots of times where we report something new starting, but then she often doesn't find a mention of when it stopped.

Well, yeah. At one point back in September I blogged that Joy had retrieved the word "ma-ma-ma". A week later, I wrote,

And we never know, from day to day, whether this day will be the last day that she says ma-ma-ma for the next year. We can't take any gain for granted. And that's very, very hard.

Guess what. One day, probably not too long after that, was the last time I heard "ma-ma-ma". But I don't know what day it was, because when she said it for the last time, I didn't know it was the last time. I don't even remember when I realized, "Hey, where are the ma-ma-mas?!"

So we end up not having a good record of when things go away, either the things we want to go away (like the night-wakings, still with us, alas!), or the things we desperately wish wouldn't go away. Like "ma-ma-ma."

It's funny, but it almost feels as if IEPs are written with neurotypical children in mind, in that way. You write goals, with the general expectation that the child will make documentable progress toward those goals, so you can record when a goal has been met and set new, higher goals. It's not set up for our reality, which is more like, "Joy was doing this thing pretty well in the fall. Then she didn't do it for a long time. Now she does it sometimes but not always, and we don't know why she does it some times and not others, and it might disappear again, who knows."

So, what goal shall we write for whatever "thing" it was? Do we keep trying to teach it? Do we figure she knows it but doesn't show it? If she doesn't do it, how can we build on it?

IEPs are not built for living in the moment.

And today, just for today, maybe even just at lunch...

Joy signed the word "more."

Knows What She Wants, Knows How to Get It

Joy had a stimmy, scattered House Blend therapy session while I was at handbells last night.

Even with a chewy-tube clipped onto her dress, she was still perseverating on stimmy toys to the extent that the barista was having a hard time getting through. The stimmy of choice was a My Little Pony, who was gettin' her pink mane intensely chewed upon.

The barista eventually hid the pony away.

Joy proceeded to go find the pony-photo in the photo binder, yank it off its velcro, and hand it over emphatically.



She got her pony back. Wish I'd been there to see it.

The Best Social-Communication Teacher

When we first got Joy evaluated and into the Birth to Three early intervention program, we had an interesting stroke of luck.

The program was short on speech therapists, didn't have one to assign to us right away, so gave us something else instead. I got a couple of months of weekly training in parental techniques to encourage communication, using the Hanen program and the book It Takes Two to Talk. (There's another version of the program that's focused on ASDs, called More Than Words, but we didn't have a diagnosis at the time.)

The Hanen training gave us a magnificent foundation for getting more out of Joy's communication, turning us into better Joy-listeners and communication partners.

The Hanen program was founded in Canada for the very situation that we were facing: frustration with long waits for professional speech therapists, families who needed to get started "right now." It's an incredibly empowering approach. As their site says,

The goal of It Takes Two to Talk is to enable parents to become their child’s primary language facilitator, thereby maximizing the child’s opportunities for communication development in everyday situations.

Some of the highlights of the Hanen program, for me:

• An emphasis on meeting your child where she's at. This includes a very basic physical principle of positioning yourself to be really face-to-face with your child, rather than talking at her from on high. But it also entails letting you child show you what she's interested in, and paying close attention to her cues, and responding in a way that stands a good chance of drawing a further response. It Takes Two to Talk calls this the "Tuned-In Parent."


• An emphasis on playfulness and fun. As in, your kid's going to be much more interested in sticking with a social interaction if it's enjoyable all around. Let go of thinking that you have to make them talk (how many times have you heard an adult doing something like: "Hey, Joy, can you say 'spoon'? C'mon, say 'spoon' honey. Say 'spoon'!" and then she doesn't say 'spoon' and it gets totally un-fun for everyone.) Instead, enjoy what interactions they *can* do... maybe pretend to eat from the spoon. "Mm, good food!" then pass the spoon back and say "Joy's spoon!" and maybe she can pretend to eat too....


• One acronym I actually remember from the program, which is OWL, for Observe, Wait, Listen. Observe to see what your child is interested in. Wait to give her enough time to send you a message, whether a sound or gaze or action or whatever (it helps to lean forward and look expectantly, sending your own message that you are indeed waiting for a communication!) Then Listen for your child's message, paying attention to as many cues as you can. Even if you can't understand what her response, if you've waited and watched, you can often take a good guess and respond accordingly. Or else take a turn by imitating... and then OWL again to give your child the next turn in the interaction.

I found that a lot of this came pretty easily to me, once I took the time to think and practice. Of course there were many more steps, and thought-exercises, and we also got several video-taping sessions with the speech therapist who was leading the training so she could comment and critique how we were putting the principles into practice. It was simply thrilling to see Joy respond.

Well, another reason we ended up doing Joy's intensive autism therapy with Agency 2 and their House Blend was that their approach builds on similar principles. In fact, the James MacDonald (PhD) that I've mentioned before was involved in developing the Hanen program early on, and much of that work is evident in the Communicating Partners program that he later developed. His latest book, Play To Talk: A Practical Guide to Help Your Late-Talking Child Join the Conversation, co-authored by Pam Stoika (PhD), is a highly-readable explanation of the approach and strategies. (Plus it's reasonably priced, what a bonus!)

The parent-empowerment agenda is powerfully stated on the very first page.

If you are concerned about your child's social development, communication skills, behavior or learning, the first and most important thing to do is to find a person (or small team of people) to be your child's social language teacher. In our experience, your child will make the greatest gains with a social language teacher who is:

• Someone who is already a competent communicator, with words as well as gestures and non-verbal communication.


• Someone who will be available to teach your child in a variety of real-life settings, such as play time, chores, meals, family outings and daily routines


• Someone who your child likes and trusts, and who likes and trusts your child


• Someone who is familiar with and dedicated to supporting the cultural and family values you hold dear


• [the list goes on!]...

Mothers and fathers, grandparents and guardians: go to the nearest mirror and look.

You just found your child's best social-communication teacher.

So, the Play to Talk / Communicating Partners training was what we layered onto the Hanen training when we were in limbo on the waiting list for intensive autism therapy, and we both wanted to keep moving forward and also start building our relationship with Agency 2.

Here's the gist of the Communicating Partners program: strategies that seem simple, but each of them can be unpacked pretty far and take quite a bit of effort and practice to really internalize!

• Balance: Do and say about as much as the child does and says. Allow child time to participate.


• Match: Talk and act in ways that are possible for your child. Talk and act in ways your partner can and will want to try.


• Respond: Let your child see that you are paying attention to his feelings, actions and words.


• Share Control: Be sure each partner has impact on the other, each partner has some control but not total control.


• Play and Affirm: Let your child see that you enjoy and value him just as he is.

All this represents another layer of our days with Joy, and the principles according to which our House Blend baristas are trained as well.

Upcoming layers: Joy's therapy goals, and how her school-district therapists fit into all this too. And maybe some bunnies.

Special Exposure Wednesday: Choices

Just lately, Joy's vocalizations are many but her words are very few.

In service of trying to get her to use SOME sort of signifier to communicate -- rather than just going to or grabbing whatever she wants -- we're making a new attempt to use photos for communication, eventually for use in making choices.

Back a couple of years ago, we did some preliminary work with PECS, which stands for Picture Exchange Communication System. It's a structured alternative to sign language in which a person communicates by selecting and handing over laminated pictures, often little line drawings like these:


Joy made some progress with initially learning just the act of handing over the pictures, but she seemed to be attaching words to objects almost as fast as we were providing the pictures, so we let it fall by the wayside.

Between then & now, alas, we've had these regressions.

After the first regression, the language did come back. This time it's not really happening the same way. It does seem to be time to give pictures another try, though this time we decided to use real photos instead of making Joy interpret the meanings of line drawings. So I went and took a bunch of shots of common items in Joy's world, and her senior therapist for the intensive autism therapy got them laminated for us.

Our first step will be using the photos in conjunction with the item or activity, eventually hoping to move to making choices. It's not a strict PECS protocol, more like just making available another avenue for communication.

Here are some of the photos. Do you suppose she'll want to play with the slide...

Or will she prefer the sandbox?


Maybe she'll want to drink some milk...

or possibly some juice instead?


Even without hearing much about these plans, Joy's older sister Rose has picked up on the idea. She's been very excited about decorating for Halloween, and is already making plans for how we'll carve the pumpkins (though we've yet to get to the pumpkin patch). At first she wanted to carve hers with the words "Happy Halloween!" but I do believe I've convinced her to go with "Boo!" instead.

Then she wondered what Joy would want on her pumpkin. And then she came up with a sisterly idea: she would draw a couple of options, and Joy could choose among the drawings! I did not prompt this in the slightest. Here is what Rose drew:


It's such a thoughtful big-sisterly thing. I hope that Joy will cooperate at least a little.

Meanwhile, I've already got the stencil picked out for my jack-o-lantern. Fair warning: it does relate to presidential politics, so don't click if you don't really wanna know... (At least I'm not planning on wearing a politically-themed costume, as I've done a time or two in the past!)
How I'm carving my pumpkin

Make your choice -- and do be sure to vote November 4, or earlier if your state allows!