31 for 21: Well DUH mom!

Last night we were cleaning up the living room, and the panda pillow pet-type thing that lives in the corner was returning to his home.  Braska came over to me as I was reattaching his little strap to make the panda appear versus just the pillow. 

She said, “Panda bear.” 
I said, “That’s right.”

Then I waited a second and remembered something we’re supposed to be working on.

I asked, “Braska, is this a panda bear?”
She said, “Yes.”
I asked, “Is this a horse?”
She replied, “No.”
I asked again, “Is this a panda?”
And she said, “Yes. Panda bear.”

Simple as it may seem, this is a big deal.  We’ve been working hard on yes/no preferences for a long time.

You see, usually, if you ask Braska what she wants, she’ll answer with whatever was the last option in the list.  And if you ask a yes/no question, it will always be “Yes” or “Yeah.”   You can ask her if she wants pizza for dinner, and she’ll say, “Yeah!”  But try to offer her pizza and you’re out of luck.  She’ll push it away and say, “Nothankyou!” 

So her marvelous SLP has Miss L has been working on this with her, and I’ve been trying to encourage more opportunities like this, and here we see results! Woo!

For anyone who is working on this particularly, here’s the instructions I was given.  (Note: Braska’s big motivators are letters and numbers.)

I’m to show Braska a letter and ask her what it is.  She will tell me correctly.  Then I ask, “Braska, is this a dog?” (The key being to choose something that is as far wrong as possible….not just another letter, but something far out.)  She should answer, “No,” of course.  But usually, she will continually answer “Yes,” until we tell her to try again and repeat the question along with a cue sign for the correct answer.

The fact that she’s getting this is so neat.  She’s really starting to take all this crazy good, well-articulated, speech of hers and combine it into useful language.  And that’s fun.

Monday, when we picked her up from my parents’ place, I realized I hadn’t called the school first thing to tell them she wouldn’t be there.  So I said, “I forgot to tell your school that you weren’t going to be there today.” And I went to get the phone. She came with me and said, “Call Miss A___.”  Yep, that’s what we did.  She connected that telling the school anything would mean that we should call Miss A.  Nice.  Good stuff.