Group Meeting January 2014

LIAM’S GOALS FOR JANUARY

1.     All we will do with PRETEND PLAY

1a. Enjoy and celebrate all those moments when Liam is truly CONNECTED to you.

***Remember that beyond language and playing skills and academic skills, what we want is for Liam to realize how fun it is to connect to friends.

***Story of Liam with Alex hiding pieces in her hands and Liam having to pull her fingers and giggling and looking and her and her hand.

Joint attention is the shared focus of two individuals on an object. It is achieved when one individual alerts another to an object by means of eye-gazing, pointing or other verbal or non-verbal indications. An individual gazes at another individual, points to an object and then returns their gaze to the individual.
Two important skills in joint attention are following eye gaze and identifying intention. The ability to share gaze with another individual is an important skill in establishing reference. The ability to identify intention is important in a child's ability to learn language and direct the attention of others.

1b. Lengthen his attention span in one activity.

Choose a theme for your game and keep building on it to increase Liam’s attention span. He is 8 years old and attention span is 5 minutes * age, so 40 minutes. If he can play a game for 40 minutes or more, his attention span is typical for his age.

One way to make a game bigger is to combine your original idea with ideas he suggests, which could be any works or comments he makes during the play. Remember when we did this with Duch when she was scripting a lot. Anything she said, we built on it.  Take Liam’s words are comments and suggestions. If you really see no connection between what he is saying and your game, then you could acknowledge: “I see you are thinking about shapes” and keep bringing this attention to the game.

1c. Strengthen his receptive language.

He is understanding everything we say. As part of the game, keep giving him jobs to do, specially 2-step instructions. He is very good with 1-step instructions. Let’s give him more practice with 2-steps ones.

Continue to have Liam practice his independence and tasks throughout the day: getting dressed, brushing his teeth, eating by himself, bringing the plates down, cleaning up, making his bed, etc.

 1d. Strengthen his mimicking skills.

As part of the game, keep using silly words, silly sound effects, silly movements, and motivate Liam to imitate. Also, he is more interested in using his hands for sign language and has a better control of his hands. Use the sign-language cards/books, the feeling cards, the animal hats, and any other props that would involve games of imitation of silly sounds or movements.

1e. Inspire Liam’s commenting and sharing opinions.

Needs versus Opinions: Liam uses language to get her needs met (e.g., he is hungry, he is thirsty, he wants a door to be open, he wants to go outside, he wants to go to the car, he wants a specific shirt, he is looking for a book, etc).

What we want now is to know more of what Liam is thinking and what his opinions are. So, we are going to use techniques for motivating him to share comments and opinions with us.

1.       Make comments yourself: “This is fun”,  “I love this game”, “This is silly”

2.       Leave space for Liam’s spontaneous comments. Don’t talk all the time, leave moments of silence for Liam to say what he thinks. Be aware of how much you talk versus how much silence space you leave for him.

3.       Testing questions versus description questions: Ask follow-up questions, not with the intention of testing him, but in those situations when you want more details.  WHO / WHAT / WHERE / WHY questions. Example: Shampaigne’s “show and tell game.” Be aware to not bombard him with questions, but ask for clarifications when you need more information. Example:

Mom: Time to get dressed, Liam.

Liam: Shirt

Mom: What shirt do you want to wear today?

Liam: Green Shirt

Mom: Great, let’s look for it.

Liam: Soft

Mom: Yes, this green shirt IS soft. You like soft shirts.

DUSYA’S GOALS FOR JANUARY

The feedback from school is that Dusya needs to focus more on her work and finish it independently; she needs to increase her attention span for her work. She gets distracted easily when given a worksheet to work on their own.

Suggestion from Megan: Introduce Dusya to the idea of homework, so that we get to practice attention span for worksheets at work. Every afternoon, after some relaxing time, and before dinner and electronics, we will tell her that it is time for homework. At the beginning she will complain a lot, but it will get better. We can empathize with her and tell her we understand she wants to play, but that she is in school and kids in school do homework to practice all they are learning. Use her workbooks in her drawer. I am thinking to even send the page back to school every day so that she sees that it is really homework.

The idea would be to move to a situation where she can complete a worksheet with no help after having given her the instructions. We could even use a timer and tell her that she has 5 or 10 (or whatever time is appropriate) to finish the task and that after that she can play again. The timer would give her the confidence that the time for the worksheet is limited.

Our 3rd Annual Christmas Party

Our Christmas Party Sing-alongs!

Hala Kalikimaka at our Christmas Party!

Liam and Pretend Play

Ladies, let's go full force with Liam with pretend play. I talked to Megan and she said that his goals are three:

1. Be flexible with the boundaries he still has about throwing and about ripping paper.

2. Be open and interactive in pretend play. Don't talk all the time, leave silent spaces for him to say something. Even if it is one word, that is his contribution to the play so build immediately on it. When playing with Alex and my two weeks ago, when we were feeding animals with food puzzle pieces, after rescuing them, I kept talking about being "animal rescuers" and in a space that was available, he said "zookeeper". So, we immediately built on it and tied the story to being zookeepers. It was his contribution and it was a great one.

3. Don't worry too much about the full sentences. Work on language around the pretend play. When he is regulated, feel free to push for full sentences, but if you see him inattentive, or jumpy, or stressed, keep modelling but don't push for the full sentence.

Group Meeting October 2013

Liam’s talking

Liam is looking for a formula in our requests. He is looking for the exact sentences that we want. He is looking for the “right answer”, instead of tapping to his spontaneous language.

We need to mix it up again!

Scenario 1:

Liam: “Seaweed”

US: “I see it” [use your hands to pretend to open it and eat it]

Liam: “I want seaweed”

US: [smiling, thumbs up, shake your head up and down, acknowledge, but do not act or talk]

Liam: “I would like to eat seaweed” or “Where is the seaweed?” or “Help me to open the seaweed” or “I want to eat seaweed”, etc.

Scenario 2:

Liam: “Jumping”

US: “I love to jump” [use your arms to pretend that they are forming a circle, like the trampoline]

Liam: “I want jumping”

US: [smiling, thumbs up, shake your head up and down, acknowledge, but do not act or talk]

Liam: “I want to jump with ____” or “I want to jump together” or “Jump with me” or “Let’s jump”, etc.

Scenario 3:

Liam: “Ladybug”

US: “The ladybug is here”

Liam: “I want ladybug”

US: [smiling, thumbs up, shake your head up and down, acknowledge, but do not act or talk]

Liam: “Throw me the ladybug” or “I want the ladybug on the bed” or “Look for the ladybag” or “Find the ladybug”, etc.

What we want from Liam is variety + spontaneity. Since he is trying to guess what we want and trying to get our help and clues, we will switch to a new strategy:

-          When he says one word, we make a general comment.

-          When he says an “I want” sentence, we acknowledge without talking and we give him lots of time to think. Be persistent. He may keep repeating the “I want” sentence. Keep acknowledging with a smile so that he can tap into his language. He knows it all, he needs practice generating the responses by himself.

Liam getting upset

When Liam gets MAD and starts crying, we need to remain super calm and comfortable with our decision. We can tell him: “I see you are mad, but we are still going to do it this way” This applies for example to not throwing things he should not throw, like his cars, or to not giving him things right away when he says “I want” because we want more specificity.  He gets upset, but you just remain calm. Like with Duchis in the old time, we could also tell him: “Liam, if you want to cry, that’s fine, but this is how we will do it. When you want to stop crying, talk to me. I will be here playing.” The idea is to let them know that they can choose to be MAD, but that we will choose to be calm, and that once they calm down, we can talk and keep playing. When they are crying, we CANNOT do what they want, because if we do, the message in their head is: “It worked!! Crying worked!!! I need to do it more often to get what I want!”. We need to show them that crying does NOT work.

We are going to put the sentences of “I don’t like” and “I don’t want” on hold for now.

When Liam is upset, instead of taking is as a language opportunity, we will take it as a flexibility opportunity. Alex’ theory is that when the kids are frustrated, it is very hard for them to manage the frustration and that blocks words like “I don’t like …” or “I don’t want …” So, according to this, it is only when they can manage the frustration better that they can at the same time verbalize the words. Show Liam that he can be calm, even when he does NOT get what he wants.

Liam’s fine motor

Liam is doing GREAT work with Miss Rizwana! Let’s do the same thing here. I will show you examples of his work in the meeting so that we can replicate. Use also the workbooks and have him sit at the table.  Miss Rizwana says he is now sitting for a long time and can do one paper after the other.

4th Annual Halloween Party - 2013

Thanks ladies for the wonderful party!!! You are really fantastic!!!!