Day 3 of PRT

Today was a huge success!

NAME IDENTIFIER:

~The IWK trainer will be named: curly
~The Occupational Therapist will be named: Gungho
~Elijah's primary prt worker will be named: friendly
~The behavior specialist will be called: Dr. Flirt
~Elijah will be called: Buggie
~my husband will be called: DaddaHub
~My daughter Evie will be called: Sunshine
~My son Arless will be called: KofC (king of crazy)

To start off the session Curly said she and the rest of the team had analyzed the tapes from yesterday and she was gonna be a little contribicting of what she'd told us the previous day. She had told us to let him play with the toy without immediatly taking control of it and then putting a verbal antecedent on it. BUT because Elijah has such a small time limit of interest in any one thing that probably that wouldn't work. So now we have to for example if we have a balloon and bubbles and he chooses the bubbles, we kind of clear the balloon away and gain control of the bubbles with only allowing a few second to him having his freebe. Then once we get the bubbles, we say "Bubbles?" at each opportunity and then when he finally makes a verbal sound, because he's worked so hard, the consequence is for him to have a longer play time with it. Instead of blowing the bubbles once and then stopping for a verbal prompt, we may blow them two or three times. That way he's more motivated because the reward is so much better.

Not only was that to change but she noticed that about 10:30 he got antsy yesterday so perhaps at 10:30 I could step away and get a snack prepared and set it on the table and then if he was hungry he could just get a snack. Assuming that in his mind that's when he usually drags me to the kitchen, but now there's all this people playing with him and he forgets that he needs to grab my hand and take me to the kitchen. So we had to establish a schedule.

We got started, Friendly(I really need to find a better name for her)got first go and being the resourcful gal that she is she'd came equiped with balloons. Not having had balloons since July 4th(Sunshine's B-day) Friendly instantly had Buggie's attention. He did some really good "b' sounds, of course all when i was out of the room. The balloon was a huge hit and he played with it for a long time. He started doing crazy sounds with his cheeks which I instantly knew was a sound i do with him, so she told me to jump in and get my ten minutes. The check pushing was not a success, but pushing on his feet were and he did a lot of verbal response for that.

After 10:30 once he'd had a sandwhich, and a couple ritz crackers we decided to move out to the patio, because no one was dressed for the pool, we filled up a small tub with water and let him play in that. It was Dr. Flirt's turn to take over so she stood gaurd at the water tub and everytime Elijah came to her she'd try to keep him away without allowing him to touch her or struggling with him(because for reasons that I forget right now that's not good for Elijah. I'll ask that tomorrow if I remember). Because it was difficult I got my cutting board to cover the water tub. When Buggie noticed the cutting board he instantly went to the patio chair and began to lick it. Curly instantly let us know that as soon as the wanted behavior got harder(by the cutting board) he had to seek out a stimulate to sooth himself and that's why his licking the chair became much more frequent.

After a few good attemps, Gungho took over, her task was much harder(poor Gungho, she always gets the brunt it seems). We'd brought out a few more toys so he was jumping to fruit loops, water, chair, squirt gun and bubbles and at one point she said, "I need more than two hands'. It was getting harder by then and they'd filled up nearly 2 dvd's and he was ready for a break so they finished off the prompt: saying that since gungho had prompted 'water' and he wasn't interested they still wanted to make him say something so that they could leave without him thinking,"wow, look at that, I didn't say anything and so they left me alone." Makes since to me. Finally he gave a good indication with a verbal sound and he got a load of water on his face.

The session ended on a good note!

Tomorrow Dr. Flirt is going with another family for the day so that the speech therapist can have a day with Buggie.

So til then
~R