Wesley's greatest struggle has always been with speech. In the past few months we have watched him become more and more frustrated at his lack of ability to communicate with us. His feeding therapist, speech therapist, and developmental therapist have all jumped in to help, working extra hard to help him to initiate communication with us, whether that be grabbing a picture card to show us what he wants, signing, or making his requests verbally.
The biggest thing we are working on is helping him to realize that he can choose to initiate communication rather than express his frustration by angrily throwing his glasses and screaming until we give him verbal cues to tell us what he wants. At the prompting of Wesley's therapists, we have created more picture cards of all of his preferred items. Now, whenever he shows signs of being frustrated and unable to tell us what he wants, rather than verbally cueing him to tell us what he wants, we have started bringing him over to the picture board and showing it to him. Once he has made a selection from the board, we praise him for telling us what he wants and then encourage him to verbally tell us what it is that he wants as well. We have been told that visual prompts are easier to remove long term than verbal prompts, so we are hoping that with time he will make his way over to the picture board himself to bring us a picture of what he wants rather than requiring us to lead him to it to make a selection. With time, we are praying that this will also lead to him realizing he can just use the words themselves to tell us what he wants rather than going to get a picture.
We have already seen a bit of improvement this week. Once or twice a day he will go to the board on his own initiative and bring us a picture of what he wants. As well, he has started coming up to us, taking our hand, and saying "up", which is his word for "help". He then drags us to what it is that he wants. Of course, his patience is very limited, so this big pregnant mama is struggling to jump up and follow him fast enough, especially when I only have one hand with which to get up while he is pulling at my other one!
As well, Wesley's feeding therapist has spent a lot of time working with him to say "I want..." before saying the item that he wants. He still needs verbal prompting for this, but with the prompting, he points to his eye and says "I". Then he puts his hand over his mouth and says "wa". After this, he tells us what he wants and then gives us a huge smile. We are hoping that with time we will be able to give him just the visual cues of pointing to our eye and then putting our hand over our mouth to encourage him to say "I want...".
While I have been encouraged by the strides Wesley has taken the past two weeks, it is still disheartening to see him get so angry when he is struggling to tell us what he wants. And now that he is older and more aware of how hard it is to communicate, often he just resorts to getting angry first rather than trying.
This morning I brought Wesley back in to meet with a therapist in the Assistive Technology department at our therapy clinic, praying that God would give her wisdom and insight into how we might be able to help him. I expected a few ideas here or there that might or might not work about how to better use the pictures to communicate. Instead, she brought out a communication device which spoke the words as Wesley pushed the picture buttons. I was completely and utterly amazed as I watched Wesley work with her. He LOVED pushing the buttons and quickly figured out how to communicate what he wanted with the therapist. She even put "I" and "want" buttons onto the device using Boardmaker pictures, and for the first time he seemed to understand the abstract pictures rather than needing digital pictures. She explained that the missing piece for him was hearing the word spoken when he made his selections.
After working with her for five minutes or so, Wesley was able to push three buttons in a row to say "I want fish". The best part about it was that after he pushed each button, he would attempt to say the word before moving on to push the next button. So he was able to both initiate conversation about what he wanted and also verbally express what he wanted without any verbal cues from us. It was so much fun to him that he willingly gave up his favorite fish multiple times so that he could push the buttons again to request that we give it back to him. The therapist will be writing up a request to Early Intervention that this communication device is a necessary component to Wesley's communication and should be provided to him. Please join us in praying that the paperwork will go through and be approved by the state before he ages out of the program in four months. Otherwise we will have to start all over again and request that the school provide him with this device.
The therapist today also showed me several pieces of software that we can use with the touchscreen on our computer to help teach concepts to Wesley. She demonstrated how to create an activity using one of the programs to show Wesley two items at a time and have him choose the correct one. I was amazed at how many abstract objects he knew, as he correctly chose the item requested every time. The therapist will also be requesting that the state provide us with this software, but even if they don't, it is well worth the $150 for us to invest in purchasing it. Wesley loves doing activities on the computer with the touchscreen, and this would provide us with a way to teach him colors, shapes, letters, numbers, animals, and all kinds of other things on the computer in a manner that he would really enjoy.
I know it will be several months before we receive any technology from today's meeting, but I left encouraged and filled with hope for the future. I am so thankful for the amazing blessing of assistive technology and that God has continued to provide Wesley with so many tools that have helped him immensely over the past two and a half years. I can't thank God enough for blessing us with wonderful therapists and a very helpful coordinator with Early Intervention who have sought to provide Wesley with the best services and tools possible for him to succeed to the best of his abilities.
No comments:
Post a Comment