Wednesday, July 29, 2009

What's Wrong With the Picture?

So James went to the Swain Center yesterday for his weekly speech therapy session. He loves this. He has a crush on his therapist. She makes him work too. She has a way of enjoying his charms, yet not letting that get in the way of making him work harder.

The past few weeks have been spent on getting him to recognize "he" & "she" and "boy" & "girl." This week his therapist brought out cards with silly/missing items pictures, to see how he reacted. She said she was very impressed that he could identify items on each card, even if he could not verbalize his observations.
pig-turtle silliness

For example, he knew there should be balloons at the top of the strings the clown was holding, even if he could only say "bah-oons?" The card with a person's face, missing the eyes almost worried him. She asked him what was wrong and he said "no eyes."

We talked about how people now ask him "How old are you?" and "What's your name?" and he doesn't respond. His therapist wanted to know how they asked him, and I told her usually like most adults wanting to talk with a child in a park or grocery store line. She then leaned over and said "What is your name?" and the little stinker (I say it with love) said "My name is James."

!!!!!!!!

Oh fine. Be that way. Yay!!!!!!

So she thinks that maybe it's the social interaction that needs work. He is used to charm and initiating interactions. Now I can see that we need to work on responses to people who initiate contact with him.

Meanwhile, the goofy cards sounded like fun. I took a quick look online and saw a book that could be a fun activity to do together, as well as help him have some colouring time: What's Wrong with This Picture Coloring Book, by Anna Pomaska.

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