Braggin'

OK OK, I've been negligent in my posting duties of late. Today, i'm going to take a slightly different tack and just flat out tell you about how Liv and Grace are doing and what we've been working on and with.

Liv- As I posted on AutismWeb a few days ago we had an exciting report from the private speech therapist the other day. During a setup of plastic food Livie whispered "I want food". The therapist wasn't sure she heard it right, but later on in the session she whispered "I want book" and "Where book". Liv's been in summer school aince July, and one of the things they're working on in PECS is adding a second icon to her requesting. "I want" and "cookie" pictures to request a cookie rather than just the "cookie" picture. The school will vocalize it as well when they do it, this just proves that Liv is generalizing what she learns.

Now comes the hard part; getting it to stick. The problem always seems to be consistancy across all areas in her life. This time, we at home have not yet implimented the "I want" and "where" icons. I'm off this week so we should be able to get this stuff in place. We need to especially, since this is the end of smmer school and the week she is off before she starts her CPU (Children's Progress Unlimited in Hazlet, great program) filler between summer school and fall.

On to Grace...Gracie continues to charm, astound, amaze and exasperate us. Echolalia is probably her main issue. It's always strange having one you're looking to get ANY word out of and another that you get upset when she rattles off a dozen words (exact dialog from a Dora episode). She also has some trouble transitioning, but we're relying on our CPU connection once again for that as well. Other than that, my littlest girl is moving in the right direction, and we are looking for great things over the coming months.

My girls have made some gains over the summer, which is much more than we can ask for. Had we relied on the township, there would have been several gaps in their summer programs, and I'm not sure without the fillers and the private therapies, if we would have have regressions rather than PROgressions.