Friday, January 15, 2010

Round Two in Two Minutes

Before tying shoes, Pamela and I threw together ingredients for what I'm calling Sprite Chicken. Yesterday, when I told Pamela what we were making for dinner today, she looked at me oddly and said, "Error!" A friend of mine tried this recipe with her spectrum children and they loved it. I made sure that we each had our own utensils so that Pamela could compare what she was doing to what I was doing. Since she seemed to have a better handle on following me exactly, I did fun little things like sniff the ingredients. Everything is gluten-free, casein-free if you are careful to buy the right brand of soy sauce.

Making Sprite Chicken


For the blow-by-blow account of the developmental milestones Pamela needed to tie a shoe so easily, click here.

Tying a Shoe

3 comments:

Phyllis said...

I wanted to tell you that your videos so impressed and inspired me that Alex and I made Sprite Chicken tonight...all with very FEW words, much expression and guidance in who is the leader from me and from him much learning to keep eye contact and watching for instructions. I plan to keep it up with the rest of the ideas. I gave Katie and Sam the camera to take pictures but they took very few as they were watching us too intensely. I looked at them at one point and they both were staring wide-eyed. Katie says she wants to try to work in this way with Alex, too. Thanks for taking the time to post. It really does make a difference in lives.
-Phyllis

walking said...

The other thing that is really helpful is to go slowly enough to let them do the thinking. Pamela took a watercolor lesson today, and one things was clear--Pamela processes new tasks more slowly than other people. Slowing down is crucial! The good news is because we have worked on these apprenticeship skills for a long time, Pamela did a fantastic job! Her teacher, who has an autistic child too, was very impressed.

walking said...

BTW, these aren't my ideas . . . they come from RDI . . . I want to give Dr. Gutstein and his wife all due credit!