Working on the lingo

Austin continues to work so hard on developing and improving his language. Just in the past 2 weeks we have seen some minor gains. I would describe Austin as (currently) "semi-verbal." He can echo and repeat many things and script entire cartoons. His limited vocabulary consists of mainly foods and animals, and he can get his simple needs met with 1 or 2 word phrases. Austin though cannot (currently) answer yes/no question or obviously hold any type of conversation. His receptive skills seem to be slightly stronger and he can follow simple commands in a variety of situations.

At our last speech therapy appointment we had a bit of a break-through with some simple labeling. See...it is quite discouraging yet fascinating at the same time to see and experience how the brain of an autistic kids works. For the past few weeks we have been working on getting Austin to label objects on flash cards and be able to recall them once a new card has been introduced. Though this may sound so simple, it has been a bit of a challenge for Austin. He would be able to label "ball" and then you would show him a card of a lion and he would say "ball." So then you would say "No...it's a lion" so he would (of course) repeat "lion." Then you would re-show the card of a ball and Austin would say "lion." Patience is the key, folks! :)

Something FINALLY clicked this week (ie- combo of new biomed treatments and behavioral therapies) and Austin was like a RECALL MACHINE! I told his speech language pathologist (Ms. Kristen) that I am going to start bringing my camera to appointments to catch these "blog worthy" visits! :)

This video is Austin recalling/labeling the same flash cards from Speech. The cool thing is Ms. Kristen photocopied the cards so they are in black and white and he was still able to correctly identify each card.