Tessie has been working on learning how to use a PECS board at school.
A PECS board is a Picture Exchange Communication System and for Tessie it's basically a board that has little cards on it, that at this point is mostly made up of things that she wants or uses during the day.
They've been beginning to teach her how to use it, and this week it really clicked when she realized that if she walked across the room and picked up the ice cream card and brought it to her therapist she could have a bite of ice cream.
Yesterday she took twelve whole steps to get that card and brought it twelve whole steps back to communicate what she wanted.
And she's starting to realize what exactly the board is for and how it's used.
And that's pretty awesome too.
PECS is great. Also many kids who start with PECS will start talking verbally. And finally when I did my placement at Surrey Place Centre there was a kid there who was 6 and had initially been nonverbal and by my placement (around 6 months after he started) he was speaking in small phrases. So if Tessie already had some words.... I'm guessing big gains here.
ReplyDeleteShe does have a few! She says "mama" and "go" mostly (and sometimes "I go"), but this morning it sounded a lot like she was trying to say "now, now, now" when I put her in her high chair! So I think we may have a new word!
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