Me "What?" ...Gabe "What?"

So, this marks the last week for Gabe and I in our ABA therapy/education course. For the past 11 weeks Gabe and I have been going to a "school" for 5 days a week, 3 hours a day, learning how to use ABA through trials, motor, play, group, and generalization. It has been amazing! I have been also implementing at home 5 hours a week. He basically has been receiving 20 intensive hours of ABA a week for the past 3 months and my God has he grown leaps and bounds! I'm so glad that I found something that clicks with Gabe. There are so many wonderful and interesting programs out there. Where do you start? I'm glad we started with ABA for Gabe. I think I also would like to look into adding a floortime program. I met last March with a doctor that studied under Dr. Stanley Greenspan (developed Floortime model). Amazing. I just knew then that Gabe had so many basic skills that needed attending to first. I was thrilled when my ABA training included goals for Play. The whole program was incredible. I will post later more details about where we went.

Today was Gabe's day of testing using the Mullens Test (sp?) through the ABA program. It was great to see him succeed in areas of the test that I remembered him not doing well in 6 months ago. Some he still did not "get". One in particular was a 6x8 page that had a semi circle of 5 black and white line drawings of flowers. Another Flower picture was placed at the curve of the circle that "matched" with one of the flowers in the semi circle. Everything was laid out in close approximation. The question was something like..."Can you point to the flower that matches this?" Gabe gets lost in long sentences. He has a hard time with two words unless it is a familiar command. He could not figure out what she wanted and just started imitating her , first pointing to the flower that she presented, then as she pointed out the semi circle, he traced the path of flowers. He knew he didn't know and was just dragging his fingers over the flowers. Now, if she had said "point to same" or "match" he would've gotten it. He mastered point to picture through an ABA program. He loves to match and sort. I know that the test has to be given a certain way, generalization is so important, but where does compensation for language difficulties come in? He probably heard..."Blah,blah, blah........this." He was able to do all the imitations very well, because they have little if any instruction except "Do this". He tacted some familiar objects, but again he does know what an umbrella is, but can not verbally tact it. If you had a field of three common objects and one of them was an umbrella and you asked him to discriminate by pointing to it, he could. Oh well.

The hardest part of the ABBLS, I find, is the very clinical questions afterwards for me. Does he say 5, 10, or 20 words an hour? Does he count in a row or can he count objects? Can he do novel actions with objects that he can imitate with? How many objects? 5? 10? 20? How many things can he discriminate/tact...20?50?100? Would he know what to do if a child asked him over to play? Would he engage? Would he know what to do? Would he talk to them? What would he do if someone took something from him? Nothing? Want it back? I think I cried after answering the first ABBLS questions 6 months ago. I left the Center thinking I had no idea my son had Autism for almost 2 years and now I can't tell you if he runs smoothly, alternates feet on steps, or jumps? I thought "Where the hell have I been the last 2 years of Gabe's life?" I felt like a failure of a mother, especially to Gabe. It hurt so deeply. How could I have failed someone so bad that I loved so much? I went out the next day and started two of the many journals I now keep. One was about his eating (what he ate, how he ate it, symptoms, and strategies we are using to get him to try new foods and to feed himself), Social journal (Strengths and weaknesses, "Ahha! moments and "What was that about ?"moments) . I need to start a language journal, but between ABA data, this blog and the other journals, I'm a little journaled out.

As I mentioned earlier, Gabe loves to imitate now. Especially Boo, our 4 year old daughter, Maisey and spoken language. Here's something funny that happened recently. First, I have to tell you that Gabe is learning to say a two word request "Give______" or "Want_______". It is a labor of love....but we push on. We have to prompt him by saying the word "give" he responds with "Ga" then says what he wants. Sounds like this...
Gabe "Milk!"
Me "Give"
Gabe "Ga"
Me "Milk"
Gabe "Milk!"
Me "Say Give Milk"
Gabe "Milk!"
The other day it went like this...
Gabe "ZZIPS!" (chips)
Me "Give"
Gabe ?????
Me "What?"
Gabe "What?"
Me ..laugh"No"
Gabe "No"
We both laugh.