video of conversation with Evie...
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This is a typical conversation with Evie. Her grammer and lack of contextual information are much more noticable as she tries to discuss abstract topics (here, she is talking about some kids in her class and past experiences with them) then if she is playing or making comments about the immediate environment. She sounds more typical when she's making comments about the immediate environment or just playing around. To me, she sounds much more affected as she tries to discuss abstract topics such as past events, etc. Conversational language is hard for her, even harder than for her sister (who has always been considered the more affected of the two, interestingly - but can now express herself better and has slightly more developed conversational and social language). This is a vast improvement from where she was a year ago. When she started school last year, at 4.0, she was just beginning to be able to have any sort of language exchange. One of her IEP goals was to have a language exchange through two turns, on topic, which she only mastered towards the end of the year - So, things have really improved. I try to keep that in mind because when I converse with her I sort of only notice the problems, and forget that this sort of discussion would not have been possible a year ago. Currently, her private SLP has her working on describing objects be category and attributes, and stating a couple of facts about them. They are also working on following instructions in sequence (for example, say your name, your age, jump up and down two times, and then say your favorite color). In school, her SLP and resource teacher have been working with her in class, trying to help her develop her social language and interactions with peers. She is beginning to particpate in class, raising her hand to answer questions and such, which is great. I'm not sure how to really smooth out her conversational skills. Hopefully, the grammer and context defecits will smooth out from being around a class full of typical kids - as long as they speak with her, and so far, they are accepting of her. I try not to have her correct all the grammer when we're conversing because I don't want to discourage her from having these sorts of exchanges. Not sure what else can be done other than to just let the conversational language develop over time and work explicitly on the grammar and context issues. Anyway, here's the vid: http://s120.photobucket.com/albums/o192/batfish00/?action=vi ew¤t=test.flv EDITED to fix the link. I think a lot of the things you talk about will just come with time. They are both developing beautifully...you must be sooo proud! Karrie Fred, to me they look as if they are coming along beautifully. I too think the thing you are describing will come in time. At least she can tell you about the day. Sometimes when I ask Nick about his day he just says I had fun. GREAT JOB dad 
Thanks. She's definitely coming along. I wish I had some videos of them at this time, last year (and the year before), because then it would be easier to see the progress. It is good, as you mention, that she can now speak of her school day (this was just starting at the end of last school year) and talks about her classmates and knows their general behavior, etc. It proves that she's plugged in and paying attention, at least part of the time. I also like that she's phasing out of repetetive questioning and her prosody seems to be normalizing, too. If not for the grammar issues and context issues, I think her conversational tone sounds almost typical in this video, at least more than it's been in the past. I also liked the perspective taking bit - where she talks about the little girls "Chloe" (I thought she said "Kwami", which is why I kep saying "he") and how the little girl througt atht Evie was mean (and that she had sharp teeth like a monster). Apparently she's picking up that other kids might have feelings and beliefs about her that aren't neccessarily true and that her behavior might affect their feelings about her. I do think, however, that Evie's conversational language isn't coming as smoothly as Abigail's because she is, overall, less socially motivated than Abigail. The last time they were assessed, Evie and Abbie's language tested about even. At 3, Evie's language was more developed than Abbie's (at 3.0, Abbie was still jargnoning with some phrases while Evie had moved past jargoning and was speaking in clear phrases, but neither communicated with you at that age). I'm pretty sure that Abbie's language has now surpassed her sisters because I think that Abbie tries harder to understand her peers and to play with them. Evie seems to be much more aloof, still. She will often talk about peers in their presence as if they weren't there. She rarely talks with them directly, though she does engage in active play with them. IEP meeting is coming up and I think we need to really brainstorm on how to get Evie more motivated, socially.
She is talking very well...Sarah cant converse and eat or be watching/doing something at the same time~if I turn on a camera she runs away so you are sooo lucky to have this on tape:) It was so good how she was kept it going with little prompting....I like that you would start a sentence or conversation and then stop...and let her finish it. I am not so good at that:) Sarah is just now starting to pay attention to how "she" says things and fixes her own grammer mistakes... before we did most of the work by modeling so much that she didnt have to listen to herself to much. Now when she talks she looks down while speaking as if to listen to how it sounds to us which is new skill for her:) Keep up the good work she is doing awesome! I love the kitty in the background too:) fred, I think they're doing awesome! There was some good conversational skills and she seemed to be starting things without being prompted or asked a question. That's really, really good! You must be very proud! Yes, thanks - she was elaborating on things quite a bit, which is also fairly new. Pretty much, if we can smooth out the grammer and get her to understand that she needs to provide more context about the things that she's speaking about, she'll really be able to interact appropriately with peers, and once she can do that, then I think that the language development will begin to take care of itself (it is already, but we still have to help push it along, kwim?) and our job will transition from teaching her language to teaching her social skills, how to make and treat friends, getting her around kids with common interests, etc. Do you like her little fit at the end? She managed to calm herself down :) ETA - those grimaces aren't tics - she was having an issue with getting the raisins she was eating stuck in her teeth :) The "little fit" at the end reminds me of Anthony's behavior. Although, Fred, I think the conversation skills are really coming along The things the Evie's SLP is working on are very similar to what they are working on with Anthony in ABA. They've been doing the sequencing thing for some time now. They have been doing word association (therapist said "teacher" and Anthony said"rules"). They just added a program where they list words like this: shark & amp; nbsp; tiger zebra & amp; nbsp; banana apple & amp; nbsp; clown fish Anthony has to draw a line between the things that go together. Then the therapist asks him why they go together. They are looking for, the shark and clown fish both live in the water. They both swim. They both have fins etc..... They also started a journal. Anthony draws a picture and writes a sentence or two about anything he wants (at each session). He loves this. Fred, you're doing a great job! ETA I don't know what that stuff is but it's supposed to be blank space LOL.
MJ - how much ABA are you still doing? It'll be interesting to see where the kids are relative to each other in a year - kind of a mini-controlled experiment of ABA. The kids are so close in age and ability, at the moment, it would be a neat data point. Do you have any recent videos of Anthony conversations? PS - I'm impressed that he's writing a couple of sentences. That's really good. Not many kids in the girl's regular kindergarten class are writing sentences yet. The girls do, but they are quite jumbled and somewhat repetetive, but they're just learning. PS - I just dug out some old video from my son's fifth birthday party. It was kind of a reality check, but not too bad (he spoke very fluently at 5.0). The good news is that he talked nearly as well at 5.0 as he does at 7, so, language development does level off for typical kids at some point between four and five and progress becomes slower. This'll give the girls some time to catch up, maybe. OTOH - it could mean that they'll still be talking like this at seven! It was really interesting to see on my son's birthday video the girls walking around chortelling in their weird, autistic-twin jibberish that they were using at that age. They were like 2 and a half, almost. I'd post it, but it's on tape. Fred - he can spell a few words on his own but the therapists help him with the sentences. He tells them what he wants to write and they write it down and he copies it. Although, he knows when they've left something out (which they do if he's trying to write a paragraph LOL). He calls them on it and tells them, "that not what I said!". His reading skills get better every day. He's getting 10 hours of ABA per week. Over the summer, they didn't do as much table work, they really focused on playdates. Also, one therapist was out for surgery for two months and he only was getting it 4 hours per week. We just resumed the regular schedule 2 weeks ago. It will be a good mini-controlled experiment! How will we remember this next year???? Anyhoo, it's interesting that you ask about it because at this weekend's team meeting the case manager said we are nearing the end. There's not much else they can do with him. The psychologist should be out before Christmas to review the program and his progress. I have mixed feelings about it ending. I'd love to have the extra money but these folks have really given us alot of support and I feel as though I'll be working without a net. KWIM? I'll try to get a video of us conversing tonight. He loves to make them but he tends to act silly when doing it so I don't know how typical it will be of his day to day conversations. Also, keep in mind, his pronunciation is not as clear as the girls'. Also, I believe their fluency is better.
Yes, I remember that from the last time you posted. His anunciation is slightly less developed then the girls, but I thought the content of his language was superior at the time. I'll remember this next year because I've made it a habit of taking regular videos of the girls speaking so that I can see what progress they've made over periods of time. FWIW - we had Meredith College come out and evaluate the girls months ago (they run a Lovaas replication program) and they recommended a sole, typical placement for the girls. They could have helped, but the director sort of intimated that we'd be paying a lot of money for having them essentially set up a token reward system and playing with them. She was protective of her program's repuatation, and her thought was that she didn't think we'd be happy with the cost vs. benefit ratio if we were to start a program with them. So, I have no doubt that your therapists also feel that they are nearing the end of the tunnel. It's good that they're going to wean you off - some therapists would just continue taking your money in perpetuity! Are you charting progress with the ABLLS? Although we are not doing any formal ABA at this point, we still have the girls summer tutor come out once a week to work on them on whatever they seem to need at the time (she usually takes them out to places where lots of kids congregate to practice social skills). She maintains the ABLLS. At this point, they are age appropriate in most areas except for social interactions. They have a few loose ends in interverbals and syntax and grammer, too. Does Anthoney do this, btw - does he actually know the grammer better than he uses it? For example, Abigail might say, "We runned to the playground!" and I will ask, "what's the past tense of Run?" and she will say, "We ran to the playground!" - correcting herself. It's, like, they know the correct tenses, but the get garbled when they're concentrating on sustaining a conversation, but can answer discrete grammer questions with high accuracy if tested in isolation.
"Does Anthoney do this, btw - does he actually know the grammer better than he uses it? For example, Abigail might say, "We runned to the playground!" and I will ask, "what's the past tense of Run?" and she will say, "We ran to the playground!" - correcting herself. It's, like, they know the correct tenses, but the get garbled when they're concentrating on sustaining a conversation, but can answer discrete grammer questions with high accuracy if tested in isolation." He does this BIG TIME. I noticed it during his speech sessions. He can do things with 100% accuracy when tested in isolation but it goes to sh-- during a conversation. Here is an older video (I think from this Spring). I can't remember what's on it. I'm posting it and then I'm going to watch it.
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. Again, it reminds me of Anthony's skills. I'm often amazed at how much Anthony and the girls are alike in skills and deficits.