Jman's Words, update 1--obstacles

I know it's been a LONG time since I posted anything about Jman and his ProLoQuo2Go. Oh well--such is life!

But it's time for an update of sorts. What with the holidays and some family and health issues, I have not created sufficient opportunity to work very intentionally with Jman on using the P2G. But that does not mean that he has not been using it, and even teaching himself some new language from it, and also developing some 'obstacles' to using the iPod/ProLoQuo2Go as well. I'll try to touch on some of all the obstacles here, and some of his progress in another post. Warning: This is long and wordy!

First, Jman LOVES messing around with "bird" or "Jman's Words." "Bird" because the ProLoQuo2Go icon is an owl. "Jman's Words" because he has HIS iPod and I have MINE, "Mom's Words." Jman would greatly prefer to have "Mom's Words" because "Mom's Words" still has access to the internet and therefore to not only the web browser but also YouTube. He has become a total YouTube junkie. Unfortunately, there are not any good parental controls on the iPod for blocking inappropriate YouTube videos, and there are so many lovely people out there taking kid's favorite characters and movies (such as Thomas or Wall-E) and creating some very NOT kid-friendly videos. We certainly don't want Jman running around echoing some of the lines he hears from some of the Thomas and Wall-E youtube videos he manages to find! Not to mention the fact that too much of even the 'good' videos mess with his brain anyway.

So, we have the two iPods--one WITH internet access and one WITHOUT.

But I must say, that's not entirely accurate. Jman's iPod still DOES have internet/wifi, and Safari, and YouTube. What he does NOT have is the Key Code for logging on to the secure wifi at home. We found that when we restricted the apps for Safari or YouTube, Jman would completely freak out. He KNEW the buttons were supposed to be there. And of course every iPod case/accessory out there shows the icons for Safari and YouTube as well, resulting in him wanting to purchase every case, in the hopes that the buttons on the stickers would work. Sometimes it was funny, and other times it was annoying! So, we decided to leave Safari and YouTube ON his iPod AND leave the wifi turned ON as well, BUT Jman doesn’t have the Key Code to be able to log on to the secure wifi at home. Thus, he doesn’t have internet access at home on HIS iPod, but doesn’t melt down at the missing buttons on his iPod. Instead, he asks me to connect him to the wifi, OR he tries to steal MY iPod from my pocket. Now THAT gets really annoying! But it’s the ‘happy medium’ we have at the moment.

There is one more aspect to the “Jman’s Words” vs “Mom’s Words” issue. Jman HAS figured out how to spy on me when I log on to my iPod with the 4 digit passcode. Then when/if he is able to get his hands on my iPod, he logs himself on and has his beloved YouTube. So, I’m now having to cycle through a series of pass codes, trying to stay one step ahead of him. Again, it’s annoying, but on the other hand, I’m kind of proud of him figuring out how to be that sneaky and successfully pulling it off (more than once, no less!).

Well, aside from the general iPod/YouTube/Safari obstacles, we also have Jman using his iPod to listen to music. At first we put on some Jman favorites, but they quickly became stimmy obstacles interfering with not only communication and interaction, but also LIFE. So, we removed some of the ‘cool’ albums we had initially installed on there, including Garfield (the comic) and Bugs On Broadway (as in Looney Tunes). We also never put any of his VeggieTales albums on there, OR any of the Sing The Word albums from Sonlight Curriculum (Bible verses set to song, which he has stimmed on for years). Instead we put only instrumental music on his iPod, so he couldn’t stim on the lyrics like he’d been doing. He has a definite favorite with, of course, “Linus and Lucy” (as in The Peanuts/Charlie Brown) as performed by George Winston (solo piano). The album is fabulous, and he listens to IT over and over again, with a couple favorite songs in particular. But being just music instead of lyrics, it really does fade into the background most of the time and doesn’t interfere with his ability to communicate or engage with us, even while his music is on (most of the time).

About a week ago, though, Jman did something totally new: He sat down at the piano, with his iPod playing the end of a particular favorite Charlie Brown song, and tried to imitate what he was hearing on the piano! Was he successful? Well, not exactly. He was successful enough that we could clearly recognize what he was TRYING to do, even though he wasn’t exactly pulling it off.

Also particularly interesting were the facts that, 1) He didn’t ONLY try to imitate the part he was listening too. He also played around on the keyboard in general, alternating between trying to learn the passage he wanted to imitate and just exploring the piano in general; and 2) he did NOT freak out when Habeeb was recording him on video at one point (though he did later delete the video and we haven’t been able to recover it yet! Darn!).

One other aspect about the music on the iPod before I move on. We later added an album that includes acapella vocals (only voices, no musical instruments) with some fabulous harmonies. Jman has spent a lot of time ‘studying’ this music, listening to it intently. He seems fascinated by the complex vocal harmonies he hears. Kind of funny—we’ve given him albums with NO vocals and albums with ONLY vocals, but the albums with both instruments and vocals create huge stimmy obstacles. There’s got to be something profound about that observation with regards to auditory processing or something, but I don’t know what it is exactly.  In any case, the music has become not so much of an obstacle with his current selections, and yet he still enjoys listening.


The next obstacles revolve more around ProLoQuo2Go in specific rather than the iPod in general. First is the fact that when Jman is really upset about something (such as YouTube not working sometimes), he will express his displeasure by deleting ProLoQuo2Go. I know I’ve mentioned that before. I still wish there was a way to prevent him from deleting that app. He goes through phases of that, not deleting it for a couple weeks, and then deleting it 4 times in a single day. Sometimes he’ll be upset (with me, because I won’t log him on to YouTube, or whatever he’s upset about at the time), he’ll delete ProLoQuo2Go , and then immediately hand me the iPod and say, “Oh No! Where’s Bird?!?” When he does THAT, I’ll usually say, “Bird’s GONE. All done!” and NOT reinstall it right away. At that point, he’s wordless/birdless until I decide to go ahead and reinstall for him, which may not be until the next day or later, it just depends. Such is life. When he’s being THAT deliberate, there are consequences, and Mom not fixing it right away is certainly one very natural consequence!

At other times, Jman will just be stimming with the buttons on P2G. For example, he’ll have it say a single word over and over and over again just because he thinks it sounds hysterically funny. Sly thought he’d broken the iPod, but Jman just had it saying “our” about 75 times in a row, just to hear the funny sound. Jman will also push every button in a category just to hear the iPod say the words, sometimes several times in a row. Even funnier, Jman has of course memorized the sequences and will say them himself just for fun sometimes.

Now, I know what many folks out there must be thinking—“That’s SO bad! That’s so not constructive! You shouldn’t let him do that! He should be using this for functional communication, not for stimming! Stimming, after all, is BAD! You’ve even been talking about stopping bad stims in this very post! Why would you let him DO that?????”

Well, because he’s learning from it. Seriously. Yeah, he’s playing, and stimming, and not being ‘functional’ or ‘communicative’ when he does that. But on the other hand, show me the child learning language that doesn’t play around with sounds and words, stringing silly stuff together and driving those around him absolutely batty when they keep saying the same thing over and over again! Jman is doing something kind of like that. Yes, it’s annoying. Yes, sometimes I DO stop him, because I simply don’t want to hear it anymore. But, for the most part, he’s actually organizing some of these words in his head, and surprisingly enough they’ll pop up in real ‘functional’ communication later on. But that’s getting into the next post. I’m still talking about obstacles.

Another Jman P2G obstacle is when he edits the vocabulary installed on his iPod. He does this regularly. Sometimes it’s just playing, sometimes stimming, and sometimes it creates problems, like when he deletes categories and wants them fixed back again. It’s a minor obstacle. Usually I can restore to a previous backup on his iPod, but sometimes I have to hook up to the wifi and actually reinstall a ‘master’ backup of vocabulary for him. The main problems with that are 1) the general inconvenience, and 2) if I forget to have his iPod ‘forget’ the Key Code for the wifi, he then disappears with his iPod for extended periods and inhales YouTube videos until I find him and get him offline again. What a stinker!

Well, I expect I’ve bored you to tears with some of our iPod and ProLoQuo2Go obstacles. I could sit here and think of others, but these are the biggies, though there IS one more that must be shared: Jman broke the screen (glass) on his first iPod somehow (probably when he was frustrated at not having YouTube!). Fortunately, when we bought his iPod, we bought with it a 2 year replacement contract, including replacement due to accidental damage for whatever reason (such as autistic boys breaking the glass, for example). So, we sent it back for the full refund and then ordered him a new iPod. And yes, we bought the replacement contract for the new iPod as well! Hopefully, though, this 2nd iPod will last longer than his first!