Nikolas does not cooperate at school, so they are having a hard time figuring out what he can do and where he is academically. So the school psych asked me to videotape him at home showing especially the reading skills he's been developing that I've been telling them about. The first is a little long, you can get the jist of it in the first minute.
I didn't teach him any of this. I think he figured out the colors from a book on colors he has, the sounding out letters came from a leap frog video.
colors - At the begining he is saying B says B and E says E. He does this a lot. He is saying every color, but he is hard to hear and his pronunciation is bad. Notice how he reacts when I don't have all the color splotches. He has come so far. He still has a long way to go, but I'm proud of him.
He is reading very well:) Sarah reads too..look up hyperlexia
She is considered very gifted because of this skill...she also picked up colors easily and numbers too. It is a great gift for teaching many things and a means they can teach themselves social stories and helps with expressing themselves later on:) Has the school diagnosed him yet?
Wow! That is very impressive to me.
My 12 year old just watched it over my shoulder, and said "he doesn't seem autistic. Nicky can barely talk!" I try to explain the whole spectrum thing to him, but to a 12 year old it is all black and white.
Thanks Mike ... like I don't know ...
Anyway, I think his skills are fabulous and something I wish for every day.
You should be very proud.
Linda, we had the same problem at Adams school with his ST(THERES a word for her but I won't say it) Don't they get it? He is phonectically sounding out the letters which is what most children do when they start to read(well, they used to do in my day, not sure what they are teaching now) Don't stop doing what you are doing, perhaps the teachers need to find a stimulant , and maybe just maybe your child is bored with the class. I love those word cards, where did you get them? Love it love it love it!! As for the colors, girl, you can come teach my son anyday, pooh pooh on the school, you're doing a great job!!
I love those boards, too - those are great! The only thing I'd suggest is sticking with the phonetically decodable workds for now - I know that words that cannot be sounded out phonetically can be confounding for kids just starting to decode. I worry that some of the words in those boards (those that require sorta advanced decoding concepts, such as silent vowels making the previous value long, etc) might confuse him, but who am I to say - he's doing great with them!
Bob's Books are good for kids who are just starting to decode. The stories are very simple, yet funny (for little kids), and they consist of nearly 100% phonetically decodable words (sight words are introduced gradually, too, but they are not the emphasis - the emphasis is decoding). I go through one of these with the girls every few days, allowing Evie to sound out some of the words (and Abbie to watch), and they enjoy the silly stories and I've caught Evie flipping through the pages, sounding out some of the words recently. The only problem with them is that the pictures are simple, uncolored line drawings, and the girls cannot resist coloring them in!
Evie actually started decoding on her own recently, too (maybe in the past few months). Like Nikolas, she was not taught, she just picked it up on her own. I started reading the Bob's books with her, and now she can decode most phonetic words and is starting to spell, too. Unfortuneately, Abbie still doesn't get it - but she tries :)
SO, keep up the good work! Like Shelley said, early reading can be a real asset for our kids. You're doing a wonderful job - It's obvious that you are putting in quite a bit of work with these academic skills and the work is paying off. You've got a realy good learning relationship there - I can't believe how long he'll engage with you on these tasks - that's great!
wow that is so great!!!
I love the way he was so patient while you were looking for the color swatches. Collin would have gone into full out tantrum lol. He is doing amazing!!
Linda,
I am going to play devil's advocate here and I feel awful about it so I am going to do so as gently as I can...which is hard for me because I am pretty straight forward~blunt sometimes especially in this area.
This is going to be one of those "hate me now but thank me later" talks.
I am URGEING you to get your son diagnosed ASAP!! I cant stress it enough...you have insurance for From the bottom of my heart the best thing you can do for your son is to get him fully evaluated by a developmental pediatrician and into a full time Sarah was 3 years old when she started ABA and more affected in some ways than your son but less affected in other ways…YOU need to know that it is NOT to late to get him in a full ABA program. Sarah didn’t start kindergarten till she was 6 and another mom waited till her daughter was 7 before starting kindergarten… This means you have at least 2-3 years of ABA to get him functional language, social skills and control over his stims and sensory issues…this requires 1:1 intervention and ABA is the best way to do it! I read many red flags in your posts and cant imagine professionals making you wait till he is 6 years old! Sarah scored a few points below on GARS on autism at three and guess what she was still autistic and needed 30 hours a week of intense therapy for 3 years to get prepared for kindergarten~ ... Please consider my words and know I am on your side as a concerned mom..I know you will do whatever is best for your son but I dont feel you are getting good advice.Good luck on whatever decision you make..it is your choice~ Please dont hate me
Blessings, We did the VB/ABA program which is ABA with more emphasis on getting verbalization and language out of them..I was concerned it was only one son that had some issues..get them both diagnosed jsut for peace of mind. The school will not give up on them just because of the autism label..Sarah has the label and was also totally mainstreamed in typical kindergarten with no supports...the smartest one in the class this year so much so that they wanted to move her up to second grade in aug..and she will be in the gifted program too:) Dont let them deny your sons the services they need by scaring you with the label as some sort of stigma...silly..labels change all the time! Keep us posted on the evaluation! Get that ball rolling! Good luck:) I just made the call to get the forms sent! Yay I feel productive and relieved that I made a decision! LOL! I'll keep you posted. ETA: Ok yeah then the VB is what I'm really interested in. THere are some behaviors but not much. And they do interact with other children. They just don't talk, but more than that they don't communicate. So while they want to interact they don't know how cause they can't communicate. And that is the part I want to really really work on. Thanks! It all falls apart though if I try to get him to actually use those words for something other than labeling objects. He knows what they mean and can say yes and no, but can't answer a simple yes or no question that I know he understands. A kid yesterday asked him if he was 4 and he waved his fingers in front of his face and ran away. He also has some rigidity. He loves the toy animals, had them all in the chair yesterday, and Ember came along and took the cow and pig. He of course started whining. I told her to give them back so she put them in the chair. He chased her down, saw her hands were empty, that totally messed him up. He went and got the pig and cow, put them in her hands, and then took them away and then he was fine.
I think its the class and teacher as to why he's having so many behavioral problems. THis is Florida and the training they get to teach special ed is minimal. She is not trained for anything like downs or autism. She has heard of ABA and brushing techniques but thats it. She put him in time out for vocally stimming. I wasn't happy about that. I know he didn't understand so he stomped his foot and yelled at her for being put in time out, so he is now labeled a problem child. Many examples of that type of thing from school. As you can see though I don't have those problems. But I do not punish him for stimming either and I do not push. I ask him and if he doesn't want to at that moment then I don't push it, I try a little later. That has given him control and now he is much better at cooperating with me. I did a shapes video where I just dropped the shape puzzle on top of the toys he was playing with and said where's the square. He did as I asked and pointed to all the shapes when requested about 5 times each, and then when I tried to get him to count he counted to 5, handed me back my puzzle, and I knew he was nonverbally telling me Ok I did as you asked now go away. LOL! He would not do that at school. He would have thrown a fit if they had dropped that puzzle down on top of what he was doing and interupted him. I have decided to go ahead and put him in the autism room simply because the teacher is very good and is trained to work with autism, its all she does. She has also received several awards from the state. I was very impressed when I saw the class. I'm a little worried about the behaviors of the other children, but then that is how he acts at school so, I am hoping it is a good move. Shelley the school psych stated today at the IEP meeting and to me personally she doesn't feel comfortable labeling them autistic yet and since they are only 4 they don't need it to put Nikolas in the autistic room, and it will also force them to all come together and take a hard look again at age 6 when the developmentally delayed label expires. They scored in the possible range on the GARS, although when the teacher did the test Nikolas scored in the probable range, the difference of how he is between home and school. She has been observing them for weeks and had a behavioralist observe them too and his first comment was seperate them. So we are doing that next year. At the school assembly there was total chaos and noise and lots of kids everywhere and they sat quietly, watched the assembly and enjoyed it. She thought a truly autistic child would have totally melted down. Lots of other examples of that, but then there are definitel signs too, almost all with Nikolas. She feels they might be on the line, Nikolas more above the line and Andrew more below it, but would like to hold off awhile. One comment she made to me today is that she doesn't want the school seeing the label and then giving up on them. If they are doing all this stuff at home the school should be able to find a way to pull it out of them at school. So all this to say no, they are going to keep the developmentally delayed label for another year. I might get the diagnosis from the dr though so insurance will pay for ABA/VB and not tell the school. I would like the communication part and maybe some of the behavioral part for Nikolas. I'm torn about it, I'm not sure if there is much they can really do for them, they might be too old. The word cards come from Melissa and Doug. Amazon has them on sale. See and spell. I buy alot of Melissa and Doug toys. The puzzles with sound is how I got them to do a puzzle, it was like a reward for putting the piece in the right place. Before that Nikolas especially would not do puzzles period. He use to be very resisitive, even with me. Its taken alot of patience. Baby bumblebee has to take the credit for a lot of Nikolas' speech. Don't know why, but everytime I get a knew one he has a language explosion. I think its seeing the word and having it repeated 50 times. We have the color one, highly recommend it. You are absolutely right Fred, I really didn't mean for him to sound those out like that. He has just been putting the letters in and had fun doing that and then just saying the word. I had a book for him to read, the one he had in his hand in the begining of the tape. It was very simple, rhyming words, frog, log, bog. something like that. But he decided he wanted to sound out the puzzle cards. I should have taken out the cake and fish, don't know if you watched that far but those two words really messed him up. He knew the word cake before just associating it with a cake, but now that he tried sounding it out he has really butchered the word and cake no longer sounds like cake. I am definitely going to check out those books! You're right he does have a great learning relationship with me, and it took a really long time and work and patience to get it there. I just wish the teachers at school could figure out how to build that relationship! Thank you all for watching them and commenting! I really hope you get the VB/ABA slots...Best of luck!
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