I’ll teach my girl 100 words

Bear’s IEP went off without a hitch. I am very thankful for the wonderful team supporting my daughter. It was comical to see eight adults sitting in kiddie chairs around a tiny table flipping through 32 pages of goals. It was the shortest one so far. We were done in less than an hour!

We have a new Speech therapist at school. The kids love her, I love her. We worked with her in a Hanen method preschool speech group. She is very ambitious. One of her goals for Bear is “learn and use 100 new signs.” Holy cow!

We’ve been attempting PECs for almost 4 years. It never worked for us.

Until yesterday.

We were hanging out on the couch watching Backyardigans. She got up, went into her room and came back with a card.

PECs picture language card

Eureka! I think we’ve got it. We had pudding for snack and did a happy dance.

I am a stay-at-home mom of 2 girls. My younger daughter has cerebral palsy with developmental delay and my older daughter has ADHD with sensory dysfunctions. My story of going from the work force to home is published in Chicken Soup for the Soul: Power Moms. When I am not driving to and from schools, therapies and changing diapers, I am a web site designer and social media geek .
Astacia
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8 Responses to I’ll teach my girl 100 words
  1. tesyaa
    November 17, 2009 | 11:07 am

    We haven’t tried PECS as much as we should, but when I finally decided that my son needed to be toilet trained once and for all, I made up a bunch of homemade cards with pictures of a toilet on them. We had “toilet cards” all over the house. Slowly, very slowly, it began to work. We now no longer need the cards – he has a word approximation that he uses to tell us he needs to use the toilet. (And he prefers that my husband be the one to take him – I don’t object :) )

  2. Janet
    November 17, 2009 | 11:24 am

    When Luke was in preschool they started with sign, it was so-so. Then they tried to add some PECS — didn’t work at all. When he started kindergarten he started off doing great with sign, so why change a good thing? Then he just started making all signs about the same (mumbling in sign). So PECS was added at the end of kindergarten. He started 1st grade with a PECS vocabulary of about 15 words so he could say “I want …” At the end of 1st quarter he was up to 65 words and started “This is …”. I’m not sure how many he is up to now that we are at the mid-point of 2nd quarter, but things are going great. I’m requesting a meeting for early spring to move him onto a communication device.

  3. Lisa
    November 17, 2009 | 12:06 pm

    Yippee..I love PECS..they’ve done wonders for Joey..We also did the Hanan program for Damien.

  4. Stacey Harris
    November 17, 2009 | 1:45 pm

    PECS helped us also ! and Social Storys also!

    Great to hear about a positive IEP meeting :)

  5. Mama
    November 17, 2009 | 6:27 pm

    Hooray, I love success in small steps!!

  6. Marie
    November 18, 2009 | 12:27 am

    Happy Dance indeed! I think with any method is to follow the kiddo’s interest and there was obviously an interest in pudding. Yippeee!

  7. MamaSkates
    November 18, 2009 | 1:56 pm

    so stinkin cool!

  8. Astacia
    November 18, 2009 | 3:20 pm

    Thanks for the shared joy, everyone. I would love for her to sign, but when your a cortical kid, those midline movements are VERY difficult.

    I went to the store yesterday afternoon and bought a case of puddung cups :)