A crack in the egg

The first thing we had to wrap our head around was that Julie was capable of learning but teaching her the same way we taught our other children was not going to work. A different approach was needed. Julie is now talking, requesting and communicating but when we first started she had a vocabulary of around 50 words. One of the best things we learned early on was to stop bombarding her with questions. With a NT (Nuro-Typical) child we make around 70% comments and statements and about 30% questions. For some reason that number is often reversed when it comes to kids on the spectrum. We want to feel successful and so we ask rote questions and we get rote responses. For example we say “Julie what color is the dinosaur?” “What does a dinosaur say?” and so on. So here is what we said instead: “Look at that blue dinosaur! Wow! What a neat Dinosaur! ROAR! Stomp, stomp, stomp!” When we stop asking questions and started sharing she began noticing. This has changed and we are asking her more questions now but the foundation was built here. This was the first crack in the egg.

Expecting her to understand pretend play was another thing we had to learn wasn’t going to come naturally for her. Having a child with special needs really makes you think how many things we take for granted with NT kids. To help her learn pretend play we started out using her interests which of course was dinosaurs and began very simply following what she was doing with them. If she would put the dinosaurs in a row I would add one to her row. I forced myself into her play. She wasn’t going to invite me in so I pushed my way in. Again she noticed. It was like a small spark went off that said Mom understands. From there I would sabotage her play. If she wanted to line them up I would do the same but lay one down and say “I’m sleepy.” At first this kinda annoyed her but after a while she was laying the dinosaurs down and repeating my play. She was learning from me! This led to her following me giving the dino’s high five. Then to using other items to do the same thing something that wasn’t as motivating. This was an amazing break though for us... she was learning! Little bits at a time but that didn’t matter she was learning!

Above is an example of what we did. In the clip I was rewarding her when she said a word by doing what she asked. For example if she said swing I would put the dino in her swing. Later in the clip I sabotaged her play because it was getting to rote. She followed really well and we had a great time doing it! This was a fun day and while it may not look like much to most, it was a big step for our family! This approach really helped us early on and allowed her to see she could get information from me and I could be fun to play with!

Blessings,

Janelle