New program design.

Work has been going well, despite having a few anxious days that I will put down to hormones. Yesterday was the overdue monthly meeting for A's program. Luckily the service provider sent a message saying that all the video looked good, so I didn't spend the days preceding panicking about it. I think it has been a big help, that I am not spending so much time on work, when I am not working. I have watched a movie, and read a couple of books, and visited a theme park with the kids. I did relent, and read a book about the family of an autistic boy, who was helped by his relationship with a dog. It really made me think about the parents of these kids, and some of the hopes they had that were lost with the diagnosis. Anyway, the meeting went well, and this morning was probably the most comfortable I have been with the 3 1/2 hour time allocation. Sometimes it feels like too much, but I actually worked past the 12 o'clock cut off before I realised we were done.
We added a sorting program, and a sequencing program to the mix. Dropped some of the tasks he was bored with, and also one where he has got it into his head that is more fun to be wrong on purpose, than get the reinforcement. For the sorting I give him two buckets to place in one, all types of balls, and in the other, all types of transport(eg, toy trains, buses, trucks and cars). He actually showed signs of getting the hang of this straight away. I was less certain that he was ready for the sequencing task, so I ditched the idea of flash cards with one, two and three items. Instead I found three blue vehicles in the transport bucket and lined them up. I worked breaking the task down further and today taught him to line them up from largest to smallest, following my point where to place each. Then I crashed them all off the table into a bucket once they were lined up. Hopefully once he starts to recognise the pattern I can stop handing them in order, and just give them to him to line up ready to crash. I think he should be ok with sequence. He knows that first I take out the mini tv, then I open it to put the disc in, then I shut it, then I can turn it on. He prompts me to do each. He can also turn on the tv, and set it to paytv ,and then find the sports channel. I think the best lesson I have gotten since working on a different program is to keep the reinforcers varied, and always be on the lookout for the next reinforcing thing. Because A was fixed on the videos, I stuck with them. Now that I have brought a few new ideas in, he has started to vocalise more, as he tries to tell me which one he wants next, thus enabling me to elicit more language from him without straying from the program design. The more things I have, the more different sounds he needs to make to differenciate between them. Now I just need to plan some active games to play with S, and her little brother tomorrow.