Coffee, cake and cars

Today I took my son out to Costa for cake (and sneakily, for some communication practice).  Our local Costa is perfect for this: it has a small enclosed outdoor seating area which you can't easily escape from with a railing which overlooks a busy road.  This means in addition to ordering coffee and cake we could use his vehicle folder to comment on what was passing by!

I was hoping to get him to ask for something at the counter but that proved too difficult (he was massively excited by all the cakes available), so I got him chocolate brownie and a drink (which I know he likes).  When we sat down I got him to ask for drink or cake.  He couldn't decide whether it was 'chocolate' or cake' which was a good teaching opportunity because we put the two together to make 'chocolate cake'.  I realised I hadn't added a 'yummy' and 'yucky' button to his food folder (his sister has those words in her food folder) and they would have been useful so I will fix that for next time!

Then we used his vehicles folder to comment on the vehicles going by.  We saw cars, vans, buses, motorbikes, taxis, and .... the highlight of the day .... an ambulance!   He showed an interest in me modelling and repeated some of the words but didn't do much pressing himself.  However if we go to that cafe and start doing this regularly I think there's a good chance he will.

Progress ....

Apologies for no posts in a while from me.  I have been busy fighting on various fronts, including getting my daughter a new EHCP (in the UK, a legal statement of special needs and the provision that is needed as a result of those needs) in order to get her speech-generating device written into her provision.  Slow progress, but I am getting there!  We now have a Speech & Language Therapist who is sympathetic to AAC and has written a report for the EHCP that she needs to have a regular structured programme to help her make progress on P2Go so that is good.

Another positive thing is that I have signed up for a course on modelling/ Aided Language Input for parents of children 2-11 who use AAC.  Looking forward to getting started.  Here is the advert in case anyone is interested.

Finally, I'm pleased (and surprised) to say that despite very poor modelling from me recently (been distracted due to the EHCP issue) my daughter has spontaneously used four brand new buttons on her device that she hasn't used before.  They are:

Book:  she visited her granny's house and remembered there was a book there that she really liked and wanted to see again so she said 'I want book' (she doesn't normally ask for books because they are freely available on her bookshelf at home).  Unfortunately she's not yet able to specify which book it was she wanted but we worked it out!

Finished: she finished her dinner and said 'finished yoghurt' (she likes a yoghurt after dinner). 'Finished' is a really good one because she has a tendency to pick up food and throw it when she's had enough so if she can start telling us this way that will be an improvement!

Please: she doesn't normally bother with 'please' or 'thank-you' but a few days ago she said 'I want chocolate'.  I said 'chocolate is finished' and she went back to her iPad and pressed 'please'.  I was so impressed she ended up getting some (as she knew she would!!) 

Night-night: her Daddy said 'it's time for bed' and she went to the iPad and pressed 'night-night'.  I was really pleased about this one because it wasn't requesting, it was just nice social communication.

So all this progress is motivating me to up my game with the modelling!  Fingers crossed the course above will kick-start me into action again.  :)