Saturday, February 22, 2014

18-"Good Job"

 
     On Facebook, somewhere along the way someone created "Throwback Thursday". My friends like to post old photos of themselves riding tricycles when they were three years old, or high school photos of awesome big hair and shoulder pads we all had in the '80's. Well, today I thought I'd do a little throwback.


   I have a friend, a young man with Cerebral Palsy, who has his own little business converting VHS tapes onto DVD's. I gave him a few tapes and found a few treasures, some of which are videos done by Robbie's old school.
   Today I'm going to share some video I love of Robbie when he was about 8 years old. First, he'll sit with a teacher in the early years when they taught him how to follow directions and then rewarded him. At first they start by rewarding with food items, but as time goes on, they will move onto rewarding with "hi fives" and "good job".
   Next we move onto him matching colors and pictures. This was to prepare him to use the PECS system. (Which I spoke about in episode 24) Then, in summer school his teachers worked on getting him to take it a step further. They wanted him to learn how to request his wants and needs, and wanted him to take the picture out of the book, walk over to the teacher, get her attention, and then hand her the picture to request popcorn. You'll see him get a little frustrated, but then....Booyah!!!! He gets it! You'll hear the teachers laugh in delight that he finally started to get it.
   I can't wait for you to see how darn cute he was when he was little. If you thought he was cute now, wait until you see this! It was summer time and he was tan and his hair was very blonde. Too cute!

 
 
If you missed episode 24, here it is with Robbie's Behavior Specialist today. We describes what PECS (Picture Exchange System) is. If you have a child with Autism, I'm sure you're very familiar with all of this. But I share all of this mostly for people who do not have a child on the spectrum. If I didn't have a child with Autism I would have no idea what ABA was, or PECS and would have no idea how they teach kids who are non-verbal to communicate.
 

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