Start Of An Interesting Week

Little Miss Raquel can be quite puzzling to all of her therapists. She's just a difficult piece of work to read sometimes. Strong willed probably does not say enough.

Today, during Cari's ABA session, she started the "you do" in vocals. She's been saying "you" and "do" consistently over the last week and a lot over the weekend, so I knew it was just a matter of time. Now she can put them all together: "No way - you do." She is beyond stubborn. Again, very cute when she does this - especially when you factor in the smirk on her face or the twinkle in her eye - but at the same time, very unproductive therapy wise when she's being so non-compliant. Non-compliant. Now I'm starting to sound like a therapist. :-)

Besides her rebellion, she did pretty good with Cari and she actually wants to move her up on three programs: familiar people, non-verbal imitations, and receptive commands. Yes! I love when they move her on, even if only slightly. Hopefully Jennifer will agree with the change tomorrow. And hopefully Raquel will be cooperative so she can move on.

Raquel was very happy to see Mary for her speech session. I told Mary how stubborn she's been during the ABA sessions in regards to vocal imitations. Mary wants me to identify a couple of items that Raquel absolutely loves so they can use these to entice her. During ABA, we want Raquel to say "open" when they open the toy box. Even the sound "O" would work. Mary gave me suggestions last week of things I can do around the house to help with this, such as keeping her bedroom door closed and requiring her to say "open" when she wants to go play in her room - or at least make an attempt at it by saying "O". Mary was also telling me that when she has therapy in the classroom (she also works for the school district), she has several boxes for just "up & down" so she can rotate and keep the kids engaged. She said she knows it's hard to rotate like that but when you are dealing with a child like Raquel who gets easily bored and distracted, that's what you have to do sometimes.

During Mary's session today, she brought this little toy chest of drawers. Inside she had a few pieces of cereal so when we shook it, it would make noise and keep Raquel interested. Mary is always very animated and we were taking turns saying "open" while playing with the chest. Raquel said, "O" and Mary said to acknowledge that as her interpretation of "open". We opened the chest, she had a couple treats but was pretty much not interested in this particular play. I told Mary that I had just given her a snack before she got there - I like her to have sessions after she's eaten so the hunger factor is not an issue - so we moved on to other things. And she finally fed Mary's bunny puppet today while saying "put in"! She's usually not too interested in that thing.

Towards the end of the session, Raquel wasn't participating as much as usual. When this happens with Mary, we ignore Raquel and engage in some activity by ourselves. Raquel then will typically come back to us after a few minutes of watching us having fun. Today, instead, she decided to sneak a treat from the toy chest, since we weren't paying attention. She not only opened the drawer, but then closed it, too. If it wasn't for hearing her crunching, she probably wouldn't have been caught. But as soon as we heard her and looked in her direction, she was all smiles. Mary then went back to the toy chest and resumed the "open" imitations. Raquel was consistently repeating "O" and getting her treats, but then it started to change. She started saying, "Pen" after Mary would say, "O", like she was finishing the word. She did this several times. Mary wants me to monitor this as well as inform the ABA team. If this is the case, she says that Raquel has great phonic (or something) awareness.