Unity Day 34: Confusion and Silliness

From Facebook:

"Decent day today. Ryan was silly, but we got some good work done. Left early, well, because of some confusion, but it was okay, I think. (?) LOL"

Ryan's day started out with his usual interest in a wagon ride.  He had time for it today.  The odd thing was, his "more" sign was off today.  He kept patting his head/cheeks with two hands. It was cute and kind of funny, but I had to correct him and give him reminder prompts to get him to do it properly. I think the confusion stems from all the similar hand actions he knows/is learning right now: high 5, clap, pat your head, wave hi or bye-bye, etc.

The other issue is he did not want to get out of the wagon to do work. I had to physically prompt him to get out, and after he did, he was mad. He fussed and cried a bit as we headed to the Yellow Room because he knew it was time to do work.

L.A. and J. were a little late, so Ryan and I ran a couple programs before we did opening song.  Actually, I let him explore a bit first, because he was interested in some of the toys on the shelf. He picked up the Backyardigans guitar again.  This time, he pressed a few of the buttons independently! 

He settled down to work well after that. First we did "coins in the piggy bank."  It was all +'s today, at a wrist prompt level.  He's doing really well manoeuvring the coins into the piggy bank. Hopefully he'll be ready to fade back to a forearm or elbow prompt, next week, for this activity.

Then we worked on "pat head."  He still needs his left arm shadowed/blocked, but besides that, he was successful at an elbow prompt level.  In fact, twice he patted his head with his right hand, with only me asking him to do it (verbal prompt)!

After that, I brought out the Winnie the Pooh piano he used to like, just to see if he remembered it.  I did have to give him a HOH reminder prompt to press the keys, but he went automatically to the musical spinning characters, his favourite part.  I put up the book page, and he remembered to flip it down.  Then he turned some of the pages independently. That was good to see. I showed him how to lift some little flaps, then he copied me, without me even prompting him!  He even pressed in an Eeyore button all by himself, just exploring the toy.  That was excellent.

Then J. and L.A. arrived, and we did our opening song. When it was time to move to the Blue Room, Ryan ran out of the room as I was trying to gather my materials. By the time I got out there, he was on the other side of the Rainbow Room, climbing into the wagon.  D. was with him, and I went over and tried to coax him out of the wagon.  Yeah, right.  We went through all the tricks to lure him out of the wagon, but he wouldn't budge.  (The key is to get Ryan to get out of the wagon and follow us by himself with only a verbal prompt; lifting him out defeats the purpose.)  D. said, "We need a reinforcer that is stronger than the wagon."  I replied, "There isn't one." D. said he'd go get an iPad, while I stayed with Ryan. By this point, I was standing there having a staring contest with him. After a minute or two, Ryan stood up in the wagon. I took that as he was ready to follow me. I went over and helped put one of Ryan's legs over the side so he would climb out. By the time D. got back with the iPad, we were in the Blue Room.

I started by doing matching with Ryan.  We did it at the table, but it was more challenging than usual because I didn't have a second person to help me. So, I was arranging bowls, cuing Ryan, recording data, and blocking Ryan from  mouthing things or throwing things on the floor.  Ryan wasn't attentive to the matching today; he got only 3/5 trials correct on Step 1 and 2/5 on Step 2.  Like I said, he was more interested in throwing things off the table than focusing on his matching.

Next, I got the pop-up dinosaurs because Ryan had been interested in those yesterday, and I thought he'd be more focused. It worked.  I HOH'ed him pushing down the dinos and the first push-button for his program, and then guided him on how to do the pop-ups just for fun.  He didn't put much pressure on them on his own, but he was willing and knew to put his hand on the top of the dinosaur heads.

After that, we did colouring.  Ryan chose the yellow marker out of the two I presented to him, and he cheerfully made some good marks on the paper with me HOH prompting.  I was barely grasping his hand in mine, though, and he was initiating and continuing all the marker movement himself.  I think we might try fading the prompt back to wrist for colouring next week.

Then, things got confused again.  I brought Ryan down to the rug to work on "stomp feet."  He was doing it with me touching behind his knees; however, D. and I both caught him waiting for the prompt today.  He was actually bending his leg and tilting it toward me, waiting for me to prompt him. We can't be having that! No prompt dependence!  D. said we should try a different prompt.  So, we tried with me tapping his foot instead of behind his knee. He didn't respond. (Keep in mind, we tried each of these prompts several times before ruling them ineffective).  Then, we tried with Ryan facing me, instead of with his back to me. No response again.  Then, we tried with Ryan sitting in a chair, and me facing him, tapping him on the knee after modeling the gesture.  We got a slight response, but it wasn't quite effective enough.  His feet were dangling a bit, so we tried a lower chair, with me modeling for him.

At this point, Ryan started to get silly. He was getting excited, and his arms and legs were going like crazy, but there was definitely not a controlled stomp. D. tried holding his hands to focus Ryan's attention. Ryan thought D. was initiating tickles or a hug, and kept trying to get out of his chair and cuddle up with D. He was giggling and kept pushing his chair back with his feet, trying to wiggle away from us.  Luckily, L. came in and D. asked her to think of something that might work for us. She suggested getting out the basic piano and getting Ryan to stomp on the keys; he understands you need to hit the keys to get them to make music, and the sound entertains him.  D. went and grabbed it from the other room, and positioning it under Ryan's feet, HOH'ed Ryan stomping on the piano. He then said, "Ryan, do this!" and repeated that action. It worked! Ryan banged on a couple keys with his foot.  I then modeled across from Ryan, saying "Ryan, stomp feet!" and he stomped both his feet on the piano!  It was silly, but it worked, and Ryan liked it.  So, sitting in a low chair and "stomping" on a piano it is, for now. I guess we'll try to go with that again next week.

After that, we moved to the floor to do Ryan's shape sorter.  I did the triangles HOH, and actually, he ended up doing most of them at a wrist prompt, and one almost independently (needed a little help adjusting the angle to get it in). D. noted how well Ryan was doing, then asked if Ryan was choosing the holes to put the shapes in, or if I was setting up the correct one closest to him. (In other words, Ryan can put the shapes in now, but does he really know which one goes in which hole?)  I had been setting it up for him, so we tried to turn the sorter a bit, so he had two choices of which hole to put  given shape in.  It was hit and miss; some he got, some he didn't.  D. suggested that this be the next step with the shape sorter: actually differentiating correctly between which shape goes in which opening.

Next it was circle time, and Ryan was incredibly hyper!  His hands were flapping like crazy throughout circle time.  When he was holding items during the activities, it seemed like he was flinging them back at D., but really, it was just his little arms and hands were out of his control.  Some highlights of this circle were him opening and closing his hands (with an elbow prompt) for "Open, Shut Them"; he independently picked up a block and put it on the tower for "Build the Tower"; he was excited and matching well during "Panda Bear", and he waved bye-bye great for the closing song.

He was hyper during snack time, too. He kept taking his spoon out of his yogurt and flinging it or fumbling it around.  He kept picking up his bottle and then tossing it onto the table. Needless to say, I ended snack time early for him because he clearly wasn't focused on eating or drinking.  It worked out well that J. wasn't too into his snack today, either.  L.A. thought some of Ryan's hyper-ness might be rubbing off on J. today.  Who knows? ;)

Anyway, we still had research to do today, so off we went to fill in our questionnaires, while the boys stayed behind to play with the students/volunteers.

When I came back in, Ryan was playing with a different pop-up toy than the one we've worked with the past two days, and he was loving it. He was so excited.  This one had sounds, and bobble-headed animals in the pop-ups.  I also noticed that Ryan was having some success pushing down the pop-ups independently. This pop-up toy, to me, looks way better for Ryan than the one we are currently using! So, before we left, I stashed the new one in our special cupboard and put the old one back in the general toy cupboard.  I'll check with the therapists on Monday, but I'm sure they'll agree that this new pop-up toy is much better for what I'm trying to do with Ryan. Plus, he was very engaged by it.

Now, this is when more confusion ensued. L.A. had left early (after research) because she had to get J. to daycare, but Ryan and I were still there. Before we left for research, I thought D. had said we might be done for the day after research.  I was kind of confused, though, because it was only 10:45, and that seemed pretty early to me.  D. didn't come back into the room, so I asked the students/volunteers if we were done for the day.  They said yes, they thought so.  So, we stayed a few minutes more and helped Ryan play with the new pop-up toy, and talked about how I wanted to use it for his program, etc.  Then, we headed out to the Rainbow Room to get our coats and leave.  We were just doing up our coats when D. walked in, looking confused, and said, "Are we done for the day?"  I looked back at him, just as confused, and said, "Are we?"  It was 10:55.  He just looked baffled and said, "I guess we're having an early Friday," and walked away. I took that as a dismissal. LOL  I don't think either of us knew whether we were supposed to be done or not, but I was glad to have an early Friday. So, we finished putting on our coats, I prompted Ryan to wave "bye-bye" to his volunteer (who had walked to the coats with us), and off we went.  *shrug*

I guess I'll hear about it next week, or at our evaluation meeting, if that was not proper procedure. (?)

[On a side note, L.A. and I were discussing, as we finsihed research, the fact that we did not work with each other's children this week. She was concerned we had done something poorly, but I assured her that wasn't a concern; all I heard were good comments about both of our interactions with the boys. My thought was we didn't do it this week because H. was on vacation, and she has always been present when we've worked with each other's child.  As it was the end of the day (or so we thought!), we didn't really get a chance to ask anyone about it.  It is a bit strange.  I'll probably ask the therapists about it on Monday.]