Reason number one.. it is a do-over. Yesterday the plumber came. Our basement is flooded because of all the rain. Andrew is verkempt over his lost stuff. (I love that word... although I hate it when I see it. My friend Jean taught me that word many years ago.) It was late Friday afternoon and the plumber brought his three year old daughter. Thankfully Andrew was watching Jimmy Neutron because he would have been verklempt over her playing with his toys. (He has watched a lot of TV and played a lot of video games in the last week.) I was able to spend about 30 minutes with this cute as a button little girl and let me tell you- IT WAS EFFORTLESS. And I saw EVERY objective we are working on so hard with Andrew to remediate. The reciprocity, the non-verbals, the joint attention was palpable.
And I sobbed. She left and I sobbed. I only have Andrew and so I never have REALLY experienced proper development and the gap is great. I have thought it when I have played with my niece but she is older than three and so I 'justified' in my mind that Andrew wasn't quite 'there' yet..but Andrew is not even three developmentally although he is 10 chronologically.
But I do see things in Andrew- great growth in the phases of child development. But we have to work for them. Hard. When we got Andrew's cochlear implant they said that progress would be about the same as a typical infant. So he received it at a year old. And so when he was two he should have the language of a one year old. I noticed we have been doing RDI for about 18 months now and Andrew is about 18 months old developmentally. With Andrew's implant it took time and then he skyrocketed. I am praying the same for this. God has a plan and I am going to keep asking for insight to be encouraged.
Later this week I want to talk about the differences of DIR and RDI and how in a way, DIR set us up for future challenges. And then in another entry about how RDI works on communication- and how similar the core deficits are regardless of your spoken language.
4 comments:
It is hard for people to "get" that the person who looks like an adult has emotions like a child. People can tell Pamela is different so they usually give her grace. It must be hard for you because, I suspect, people think Andrews "only" challenge is the implant.
Hello, I also have one on the spectrum, he is 6. We are looking into RDI because I was particularly satisfied with a behavior based approach, but we live in OK and there aren't any consultants here. Question for you: can you do RDI with a long distance consultant (never meeting face to face)? Can you do RDI without a consultant? What does one do in my situation? It's disapointing how exclusive RDI seems to be. :(
Jennifer,
I see my consultant 1X a year and then do the rest of the appointments by Skype...i do those 2X a month. We also upload video tapes. It really isn't exclusive- although i know what you are saying. You said you are looking into RDI because behavior approached worked? RDI is not behavior.. please feel free to email me! amylapain@yahoo.com.
I know, it was a typo, lol. I was trying to say I wasn't happy with the behavioral approach. :)I have the RDI book, so I do know a little about it. How do I go about finding a consultant long distance? I guess I'd be traveling to Texas or Arkansas??
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