I decided to take a week or two and recharge my batteries, so in the interim Tina has graciously submitted a guest post about Finn’s recent communication advances. The stories are below.
First, a few stores about his PODD book.
(1) A few days ago Finn spent the afternoon at my mom’s house. A friend (Johanna) who is represented in his PODD book came over to play. Normally, at the end of the day I would usually use the PODD book to “tell” Finn what happened that day. As I navigated to the people page to tell Finn that Johanna was at Omi’s house today, I paused, then instead of telling him that, I decided to ask him “Who was at Omi’s house today?” He immediately pointed at the image for Johanna! I can’t believe I have never thought to do this before!
(2) The other day as we were using the PODD book to talk, Finn pointed at “camping”. He has been doing this a lot ever since his cousins were here a few weeks ago and spent some time camping. Usually when he points to camping I talk about how his cousins went camping when they were here. This time, instead I said “oh camping! Do you want to sleep outside?” As soon as I said that, he immediately pointed to “sleepover” which is on the same page of the PODD book (special events). He definitely associated my saying “sleep outside” with sleeping somewhere special or different and pointed in context to “sleepover”! Again, it was very exciting.
(3) On Monday, during Finn’s speech session Finn asked for food. His therapist had veggie chips so she used the “potato chips” icon to describe the chips. Ever since that session, he has been pointing at “potato chips” in his PODD book. I find this interesting because he never really pointed at that before, so he was definitely repeating something that he had learned on Monday. Unfortunately, we don’t have any potato chips in the house, so I keep having to tell him we don’t have any, and we don’t have any veggie chips either. Now, however, he has begun asking for other types of food. Often he wants crackers but this morning, for instance, he asked for a second banana after already finishing one for breakfast. I gave him a second one and he was so happy. Clearly that was what he had wanted.
(4) Finn has a map of the world in his room. A few weeks ago when we were sitting in his room he pointed at the map. So I started telling him about the map and showed him things that were meaningful to him. Specifically, I showed him Germany (where his cousins had just visited from and where we have also flown), Louisiana (where we have visited his grandparents), Los Angeles, and all the different Oceans (telling him about the Pacific Ocean when we go to the beach, etc). He was really intrigued and was constantly “asking” me to show him things on the map. A few days later we were using his PODD book and he pointed at “Germany.” So, like I always do when he points at something, I verbalized “Germany” and then he immediately went over to the map and pointed at the map! Now every morning he insists that we look at the map and he won’t let me go until I have shown him all the different places! He seems to take after his father in his interest of maps!
And a few other communication stories:
(1) Finn is becoming very intentional in indicating when he needs to use the restroom. For a while, I have called it “subtle” signs, as I am able to decipher when he needs to go by knowing that (a) it is approximately time, and (b) he is making a specific face, doing a little one legged dance, getting suddenly still or quiet. Now for a while, he has combined that with very subtly pointing at his bottom or hips. Well this morning, I was cleaning up a mess at the breakfast table and he had gone to play in another area of the house, suddenly he came running up to me, stopped next to me, loudly exclaimed “uhhh!” and forcibly touched his bottom with a flat hand. It could not have been more obvious what he was trying to say! I immediately took him to the restroom and he used the room for its intended purpose.
(2) Finally, just a fun story. Last week we had a playdate at a friend’s house and they had a green parrot as a pet. Finn was interested in the parrot (although he was more interested in their dog), but the cool thing is that when we got home he started constantly removing a little green parrot magnet that we have on our refrigerator and walking around with it. We have a whole bunch of magnets on the refrigerator and he has never really played with them or shown much interest, but he has been searching out that parrot almost daily now. Definitely associating it with the parrot at his friend’s house.
Just wanted to share!
