Signs of the time

Kaia has officially added another sign to her repertoire. She really is making steady progress with communication. For the past week she’s been doing the “all done” sign, in addition to “more” and waving “bye bye”. The "all done" sign looks kind of like if you were brushing crumbs off your chest. The way Kaia does “all done” is kind of a both hands wave. She gets very excited when she sees us excited about her doing the sign. We start signing it back to her and her sign becomes even more animated.

Her receptive language ability is also growing more evident. Lately when we tell Kaia "it’s time to eat" and make the eat sign to her, or ask her “where do we eat?”, she vocalizes and points with an isolated pointer finger to her highchair. Then she crawls very excitedly to the highchair, pulls up to it, and looks at us like, OK, you said it’s time to eat, let’s eat.

She also loves her pecs schedule. Pecs is a picture exchange communication system. We started doing very primitive versions of pecs last summer with Kaia. Initially we offered choices with the pictures, and reinforced whichever picture she chose with that toy or activity. Then Kaia’s speech therapist taught us how to use a picture to teach her the concept of exchanging the picture for a desired outcome. For example, we used a picture of a green circle during a turn taking activity and Kaia would have to give us the green circle to have a turn with the toy. At first, when Kaia wasn’t yet releasing objects, we had to have two adults doing this activity with her. One adult would physically assist Kaia hand the picture to the other adult to get her turn. It’s much easier now that she is releasing objects because she is also giving us things.

Our newest foray with pecs is an activity schedule. I read about this at: http://www.brighthub.com/education/special/articles/2723.aspx. Although it really is intended to help kids with autism function more independently, I figured it would be an easier way for us to incorporate pecs into Kaia’s daily life now by giving her more opportunities to have exposure to the pictures and the concept that the pictures mean something. The other methods above I found I had to make a conscious effort to do once each day. It was another thing on the to do list each day and Kaia only had that one opportunity each day to learn that these pictures are useful for something. Kaia also thrives on routine so setting up a visual schedule seemed to make sense with her affinity for routine. It still is difficult to remember to return to the schedule so that she can remove the latest completed activity and put it in the all done envelope. Sometimes we get a few pictures behind but we just talk about them when we do catch up and she loves the chance to put more than one in the packet. It’s great because we make her stand to remove the picture, then squat to put it in the packet.

Last, but certainly not least, Kaia was also saying mama like crazy on Saturday. Music to my ears!