Self-narration

This morning we were getting ready to make a commissary run. I told Jman he needed to brush his teeth. Usually I get balking at this, but today he got up and walked into the bathroom, carrying his iPod with him. As he entered the bathroom, I heard some of the pages he was navigating through in ProLoQuo2Go: My Spaces, followed by My Places, followed by My House, followed by Bathroom, followed by Personal Care. Each of those was a ‘category’ that led his to another page of choices.

Now in the bathroom, with the page opened up to “Personal Care,” Jman punched in “brush teeth” “toothbrush” “toothpaste” “awesome”. And it truly was awesome! He was ‘narrating’ the activity of getting his teeth brushed! Associating language with the action going on, self-narrating, and even commenting on the whole scenario (awesome!) is so way cool! Those really are huge developmental leaps for someone on the spectrum. In Jman's case, he's doubly challenged by his complicating language issues. For him to begin some proto-type self-narration with the P2G is fabulous stuff, and continuing confirmation that AAC was a great way to go for helping Jman finally begin to learn and expand language. It seems it will also help him with encoding episodic memories as well, especially as he plays around with and uses some of the comments and emotional language choices available. (He's having fun playing around with "I like it" and "I don't like it" lately. He hasn't applied them to anything yet, that I know of, but he played around with "awesome" for a while before spontaneously applying it this morning.)

Down the road we’ll continue to work on details of grammar and syntax and communicating in ‘complete sentences,’ but the fact that his mind is engaged and narrating events with language is just fabulous. We have a long way to go, but he’s taking some terrific baby steps on his own with ProLoQuo2Go. Now if we could just keep him from deleting the app from his iPod! Hopefully that’s just a phase he’ll grow out of. :)

Jman, YOU are awesome!