7.30.2008
July
JULY
The DT group was ok... but I really didnt find anything about it that was beneficial to us. The ladies were always nice to us, but never really sat down to talk about any individual needs that he might have. I spoke with our Service Coordinator and discussed that if anything was theraputic to him, it was invisible, so we decided to stop going to that group. We are set to start an individual DT in early August.
SLP is going very well. We have had 6 sessions so far and we have had some great progress. We have learned to give him ample time to complete thinking about what the question was before he answers. He is pretty good at answering Yes/No questions now, and is speeding up his response time. The most amazing breakthrough of THIS week (7.28.08) is that he started responding to familiar questions WITHOUT the echo. 'Do you want to go outside?' 'Yes.'
Scripting is when a child with autism memorizes tv shows, tag lines, songs, etc.. and repeats them at various inappropriate times. But it is also called scripting when they learn to respond to questions. They learn 'scripts' as their answers. Yes & No are scripts. More & All Done are scripts. For example when he is asked if he wants to eat, he can learn that it is a Yes/No question. But it takes a while longer for them to learn what the appropriate response should be. You can tell that it is a script that he is choosing from because there are many times you ask him a question like 'Are you ready to go Night-Night?' and he says 'Night-Night... Yes' and then sees our face and changes his answer to 'No.'
Well, the most amazing thing is that he uses scripting in his play as well. I didn't know that was possible. The reason he will take a car and push it back and forth in front of him is because he has seen us do that. So, the more we play with him in imaginitive ways the more he will build his scripts. The more he builds his scripts... the more he will finally make the connect that hedoesn't have to do it just like we did - or at least that is the hope.
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I'm so glad to read your blog. I'm in my forties and realized I'm on the spectrum a few years ago (when my daughter was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome). Right now I'm reading all I can find from parents whose children are on the spectrum, trying to make even more sense out of my childhood.
Your description of scripting gave me yet another "aha!" experience. This is EXACTLY how I learned all my social interactions as a child. I was always so, so focused on the response "over there" to see if I'd acted appropriately (and, honestly, I still am). At school age (when I first realized I was really, really different), I started mimicking my classmates--I even practiced phrases and movements in my bedroom. I would imitate people who seemed to be popular and thus apparently had scripts worth running. I remember in high school, one of my friends got so mad at me because she said I was "posing" as a friend of hers who'd visited, whom everyone really liked and thought was funny and witty. And she was right...I was posing, though I didn't realize it. I was subconsciously trying out that girl's style, which seemed to be a successful way of relating to others.
I can reassure you, from my experience, that your son will almost certainly expand his learned repertoire of social behavior to be able to "mix and match" to fit the occasion, and eventually, it will become so automatic for him that he even enjoys himself instead of sweating to seem normal. (Though that will probably always be in there somewhere, too. :-) )
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