New communication

Natalie finally received her PECS book last week...I've just forgotten to blog about it. The first picture shows the book closed, with the three pictures we've used with her so far. We actually only use one picture at a time during this stage as she learns to use PECS.

The second picture shows the book opened to one of the pages (there are two pages, both sides, plus the inside covers covered with velcro to attach pictures to) with just a few of Natalie's "favorite things".

At this stage of PECS, we're still teaching Natalie to "trust" it as a communication method...later she will distinguish between pictures and perhaps put together sentences.

This is how a session looks like right now: I get a bowl of raisins for her snack and sit next to her at the table with the PECS book between us. I get the picture of raisins and put it on the outside of the book and show her the bowl of raisins in my hand. She gets the picture, gives it to me, and I give her a raisin and say "raisin" as I give it to her. Then I put the picture back on the outside of the book, and we start again.

She is very quick to grab the picture and give it to me for the raisin (or bite of banana, or Cheerio) at the beginning, but after 7-8 times, she starts to tire of the game, so I end up giving her the rest of the snack all at once. I know she understands the concept pretty well.

Natalie has also started saying "Momma" and "Daddy" more spontaneously. This means she probably says them 2-3 times a day...which is not as much as a typical child would normally say the names of their parents, but it's more than she's done in the past.

Konrad has also started babbling those words in the past few days. Look out!

I work with Natalie on PECS during her afternoon snack, which is also one of the times I work with Konrad on his feeding, so I really feel like I'm multi-tasking as I sit with Natalie on my right and Konrad on my left in the high chair: receive PECS picture, give raisin to Natalie, say "raisin", return PECS picture to the book, turn to Konrad, sign "more please?", give Konrad a bite of cereal, turn to Natalie to accept the PECS picture again...repeat!

Vee are very efficient!