Two Major Milestones in One Week!

This week had two major milestones for Pamela: her twentieth birthday AND reaching Stage 3 of RDI. Stage 3 reflects the dynamic thinking of children between the ages of two and three years old. During this stage, we will be working toward short conversations about what things we did together and our different perceptions. Pamela will learn to take on the responsibility of sharing joint attention, finding out how other people feel, and trying different things for fun. She will be improving her ability to collaborate by working together better, checking our actions, reactions, and communication, and using language to smooth out coordination between us.

Right now, we are poking and probing the foundations for this objective. We are focusing on something very difficult for Pamela: constructing a coherent narrative about past events that include feeling and meaning. Like many people with autism, Pamela remembers incredible details about past events. The first twelve years of her latest autobiography filled one section (36 pages, both sides) of a five-subject notebook. She is starting to sprinkle it with feelings here and there. But, there is very little depth of feeling or meaning attached to the story of her life. Here is a typical entry:


RDI focuses on episodic memory and self-awareness as one of the five core deficits of autism: "the ability to reflect on past experiences and anticipate potential future scenarios in a productive manner. Developing an internal mental space to consider, reflect, preview, prepare, regulate, evaluate, hypothesize and dream." The hardest thing about encoding episodic memory is the emotion (the subjective) associated with the what, when, and how of the event (the objective). What is even harder for our kids is seeing the present as a continuation of the past while previewing the future!

Chat about the Future
One thing I love about how things have been flowing lately (and I give all the glory to GOD for this) and merging into one tapestry. All year long Pamela and I have been working on experience stories (a la the association method) to work on past, present, and future tense syntax. During the week, I preview future events by having her ask and/or answer questions about what might happen, either orally or in writing. Here is an example of Pamela and I talking about going to co-op the next day:


Chat about the Past
We also review past events by having her ask and/or answer questions about what happened, either orally or in writing. Up until now, my focus has been on syntax and language rather than a coherent narrative (remember, these are the baby steps required for a person with aphasia and autism). Here is an example of Pamela and I talking about what happened at co-op the previous day:


As my consultant explained to me the first lesson in our objective (guiding Pamela in recalling feelings and deriving personal meaning from her narratives of past events), I realized we have been laying the foundation for this all year long. Quickly, a plan for this fell into place. Borrowing from Charlotte Mason of tying something already learned with something new, I could cut up the typed narrative of a past event into sentence strips and show her to ask feeling questions (learned a few years back through the association method) about important facts. Then, I could tap into the idea of having a moral to the story a la Aesop and come up with a moral to her story.

I decided to pick an event that I thought worthy of spotlighting and encoding into an episodic memory. Every Wednesday, we always pick up lunch or dinner for Pamela at a drive-thru restaurants. Pamela usually chooses a different restaurant in advance, so we headed to McDonald's to order lunch last Wednesday. We drove up to the drive-thru and saw a long string of cars. My heart sank because I was already running late for a dental appointment and usually Pamela would rather wait or have a mini-meltdown because it was taking too long. I knew better than to suggest we try another restaurant at the last minute. Those of you with autistic children need no explanation! Pamela noticed the very long line too and very calmly said, "Changed my mind. I want Hardees." I thought it important to focus on how beautifully she handled a situation that would have been a crisis for her a few years ago. Here is what she typed for her past experience story:

Adding Feeling and Meaning
I cut up the story into strips and placed them in order. Then I wrote out "How did you feel about" and let her decide about which fact to ask a feeling question. She picked a fact and answered the question, while I recorded what she said in writing. We ended up selecting five facts for feeling questions, and Pamela blew me away with her ability to pinpoint accurate feelings for each situation.

Then, I explained to her how we were going to write a moral to this story and, after going back and forth we came up with this: "Changing your mind is great. You can think of something else." The follow video shows exactly how we worked on attaching feelings to facts and deriving personal meaning to picking up lunch from the drive-thru.

Fun with Sequencing Cards

Pamela already knows how to put pictures in sequence, but we are having fun with a twist to this idea. I cut up cards in a sequence and put them in order. I present them one at a time in order. Pamela tells me what the characters are doing (practicing present progressive tense) on the card being shown. To add an element of having to read my face for information, she has to guess what will happen next. Then, I use mainly non-verbal communication to help her figure it out. With the climax of the story, I try to do a little bit of anticipation like counting before I show the card, starting and stopping, pausing, acting very dramatic, etc.

So far, she likes the nursery rhymes at Enchanted Learning. I do not tell her the title of the rhyme so part of the fun is guessing it. They are a bit drab, so I use our trusty, old, reliable, lovable 1995 version of MGI Photosuite to add some color.

These stick-figure story sequences look dull, but nearly all of them have a funny twist that Pamela makes Pamela giggle. For example, she expected the one with a fireman carrying a hose to be about a house on fire. Imagine trying to give her non-verbal clues for birthday cake! I ended up humming the birthday song. The thought of someone putting out a cake with a firehose tickled her fancy.

From time to time, Hearing Journey posts wordless books for the weekly preschool activities. Pamela loved this week's story which was about a pig and sheep riding a sled and crashing into a snowman. It reminded her of the beloved story Pa told Laura "The Pig and the Sled." If you think this week's story is cute, be sure to download the pdf file because it turns into a pumpkin on Friday!

Once I run out of entertaining story sequencing cards (none of that dull life skills stuff that bores us to tears), I plan to print out and cut up online comics.

Today's version of Foxtrot is a perfect example of something tailor-made for this activity. It will probablt change by tomorrow, so I will briefly narrate. Foxtrot is busy working at a computer. His mother is asking him about his progress on taking out her wrinkles in the family Christmas picture. He shows her the family on the bridge of the Death Star (Pamela is a fan of Star Wars), riding the back of a T. Rex ala Jurassic Park, waving at a Balrog (we read the books and have the Special Extended Editions of all three movies and even the cheesy cartoon version from the 1970s) and navigating the first level of Super Mario Brothers (the only game she will play on her Game Boy). The beauty of this comic is that I can have her guess each new scene and think of clues to help her think of each scene. I am already having fun just anticipating doing this one with her!

Done with Did

Last week, I outlined my plans for Pamela's speech therapy program (the association method). I am still in the process of assessing irregular verbs for simple past tense, but I have confirmed that Pamela already knows sixty-five irregular verbs plus five more that she knows orally but misspells. It is only Tuesday, and I can already see that she has also mastered constructing past tense questions that contain did. She has mastered enough irregular past tense verbs to move onto the next step, and I plan to cycle them through speech therapy and good old conversations to learn the ones she does not know.

I am already planning next week, a very pivotal step. For years, prior to starting the association method, Pamela always got her present progressive tense wrong by saying either "is sleep" or "sleeping" as the verb in a sentence. Next week, we are going to try again and see if the association method will help her finally conquer this glitch in her syntax. Next week, I will teach sentences in present progressive tense in comparison to past tense. The following week will be questions in present progressive tense. It will be a major test of the efficacy of this method for Pamela.

Pamela is doing well in identifying the elements of a story (including coming up with her own title). Today, she easily sequenced seven questions that go with sentences from a story based upon the order in which the answers occurred! She can also correctly match sentence fragments and the harder task, question fragments. A year ago, she could not have matched the following correctly:



Amazing, huh?

Thinking Out Loud with Tenses

In a comment to an earlier post, my friend Jennifer asked me what is after past tense. That is a good question. From this point on, the plans in the manual are not a well-laid as before because you tailor some of it to the needs of the student. One reader of my blog privately asked about my emphasis on grammar because it sounds like I am teaching Pamela these abstract concepts. Focusing on grammar helps me frame and understand the next step in the process. All Pamela sees are the new forms of syntax modeled and practiced. In my mind, it will be a long time before we address formal grammar ala parts of speech if ever.

Today, I sat down and roughly outlined the next couple of months:

• Simple Past for one more week to let me determine what irregular verbs she has mastered
• "Did" Questions for syntax she has already mastered
• Simple Present (repeated actions such as hobbies, habits, routines, schedules, etc.) contrasted with Present Progressive (what is happening right now in the moment) => "I sew animals" versus "I am sewing a duck"
• Simple Present (facts and generalizations) contrasted with Present Progressive (what is happening right now in the moment) => "Dogs bark" versus "My dog is barking"
• Transition to stories in a paragraph format
• Infinitives versus prepositional phrases with to => "I wanted to buy some bananas" versus "I went to the store"
• Double prepositional phrases => "The dog is under the tree in the back yard"
• Uncountable nouns => "some cheese" or "a slice of cheese" not "a cheese"
• Past Tense stories
• Transition words in Past Tense Stories => First, Then, Next, After
• Past Tense stories based on a single picture (assumed information in past tense, action happening in the picture in the present tense)
• Past Tense stories based on a series of pictures

Past Times

Pamela has been practicing past tense all week, and I am thrilled with how many irregular past tense verbs she knows without being explicitly taught! Today, I made a list of 131 irregular past tense verbs. During the next two weeks, I plan to type up sentences with the verb missing and instruct her to fill in the blank with the past tense form of the irregular verb given. Before we move to past tense questions, I want to know what irregular verbs trouble her so that I can work them into our daily association method efforts. If she were struggling, I would linger on past tense. She is not! She already knows so many irregular verbs that she is ready to move on once I catalog them.

Most readers have no idea how huge this is for Pamela. For the past three years, we have been working very hard on syntax and I was dreading past tense verbs because so many of them are irregular. I had worried that we would be doing them for months because children with aphasia are notoriously poor guessers when it comes to recalling the quirks of language. This tells me she has managed to pick up irregular verbs all on her own without any help!

YIPPEE!!! Major Snoopy Dancing here in Carolina!

The Past at Last!

I just have to share this raspberry dessert before I get to the meat of this post. One reason why I videotape some of our interactions is because of things I miss. I did not catch Pamela's raspberry until I reviewed the clip! Her expressiveness here is just wonderful!


I have not blogged about the association method much lately. Pamela continues to work through the steps nearly every school day. Today, she started past tense verbs, and I am so excited! She has already developed an ear for irregular past tense verbs, which means she will require less repetition. The big thing will be recognizing did in a question means past tense while do and does mean present tense. She gets the concept of past, present, and future thanks to Dicken's A Christmas Carol. The other good news is that Pamela no longer says "The dog is bark" or "the dog barking"--I decided to borrow one of Charlotte's recommendation to replace one habit with another. In this case, we dropped all efforts to correct present progressive and worked on practicing present tense ("the dog barks"). She is working through the blue books (Level 2) and is half-way through the third (of ten) primers at this level.