PECS

I just thought I should update from the past month.  James has had a lot going on and has taken it very well.  We moved to a new house.  Which went way better then expected.  We talked to him a lot about moving and thought he would have a hard time since for several months after our last move he kept asking to go home.  The day before the move I asked James if we should move to a new home.  His response was, "Again!"  On moving day he went over to play at someone else's house and loved in because they had a dog.  Then he came to the "new house" and loved it.  The next day we went back to the old house to clean it and the second we pulled in the driveway he yelled, "No.  Try again!"  Then he was so aggravated while we were there that I ended up just leaving Doug to clean and took the boys back to the "new house" to unpack.

We have also noticed that James has been a lot more aggressive lately.  He hits all the time and has started kicking.  One morning Mikey came out of their room with a bruise on his eye.  Don't know if it was James or if he did it himself but we definitely need to figure out this aggression thing before it gets too bad.

Also just before we moved I went to a Girls night that somebody in the ward was hosting.  There I learned that 4 of the 6 of us that were there all had children that had special needs.  One has ADHD with a lot of the same characteristics as James, one has Aspergers, and one is PDD-NOS.  I was so excited to find this group of mothers who knows exactly what I am going through!  I finally don't feel so alone in this and have people I can go to for advice.  

Finally school.  School is awesome!  James loves it and seems to be making a lot of progress both academically and with his communication, social skills, and behavior.  One thing we have worried about a lot is that James wouldn't have any friends because first he doesn't know how to make friends and second because his behavior is pretty young for his age.  The other day Ms. Ginger was telling me about a particular girl James likes.  She pointed out a cute little blonde girl named Mckiley.  She said that James always likes to hold her hand.  They tried some of the other kids to see if they would hold their hands but no, only Mckiley.  When I asked James about Mckiley he got a big smile on his face.  

Also on Tuesday James came home from school talking more then I have ever heard before.  At dinner he sat at the table and ate with us and was asking for things very well.  So I mentioned to Doug that I wondered if they had started PECS at school that day.  They have been telling me that they were going to try it with him to see if it would help.  Today when I dropped him off at school Ms. Ginger told me that they had started it on Tuesday.  She said he got to Stage 3 within 5 minutes and she has never had a student get it that quickly.  I was pretty excited because I had noticed a difference at home and she said that she thinks they will really start to see some huge progress in his communication and vocabulary.  Once they get it established at school then they will work with me to use it at home.  

So what exactly is PECS?  

PECS stands for Picture Exchange Communication System

 

PECS begins by teaching an individual to give a picture of a desired item to a “communicative partner", who immediately honors the exchange as a request. The system goes on to teach discrimination of pictures and how to put them together in sentences. In the more advanced phases, individuals are taught to answer questions and to comment. PHASE I How to Communicate Students learn to exchange single pictures for items or activities they really want. PHASE II Distance and Persistence Still using single pictures, students learn to generalize this new skill by using it in different places, with different people and across distances. They are also taught to be more persistent communicators.

PHASE III
Picture Discrimination
Students learn to select from two or more pictures to ask for their favorite things. These are placed in a communication book—a ring binder with Velcro® strips where pictures are stored and easily removed for communication.

PHASE IV
Sentence Structure
Students learn to construct simple sentences on a detachable sentence strip using an “I want” picture followed by a picture of the item being requested.

Attributes and Language Expansion
Students learn to expand their sentences by adding adjectives, verbs and prepositions.

PHASE V
Answering Questions
Students learn to use PECS to answer the question, “What do you want?”.

PHASE VI
Commenting
Now students are taught to comment in response to questions such as, “What do you see?”, “What do you hear?” and “What is it?”. They learn to make up sentences starting with “I see”, “I hear”, “I feel”, “It is a”, etc.

I have to say I am pretty excited for him to get to phase 5 and 6.  I would love to be able to ask him a question and get a response.  I actually saw a little of this on tuesday, I asked him a question, a very basic question, and he actually responded.  I was pretty shocked.