{"id":998,"date":"2007-03-10T13:11:00","date_gmt":"2007-03-10T13:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog2\/2007\/03\/natmon-comes-alive\/"},"modified":"2007-03-10T13:11:00","modified_gmt":"2007-03-10T13:11:00","slug":"natmon-comes-alive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/2007\/03\/natmon-comes-alive\/","title":{"rendered":"Natmon Comes Alive"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
OOh Baby I love your way, everyday.<\/span>
–Peter Frampton<\/p>\n

It is springtime in my family. Nat, my tall yellow flower, seems to be blossoming once more. He has become very enthusiastic about making his art creations, which are cray-pas on colored construction paper, cut up, and then carefully glued. They are just beautiful, magnificent mosaics of paper and soft color. His teacher recently discovered his preferred medium, and helped him articulate it by cutting up some of his drawings and getting out the glue. Now he is a cutting-and-gluing fiend!<\/p>\n

Nat is also now a laundry maven. He forces me to do the laundry as soon as the hamper is half-full (when to me, eternal lazi-est, it is half-empty!). He says, softly but intently, staring into my eyes, holding onto my hands, “Laundry…” And he won’t quit until it gets done. So, you might say that this means in ABA-land, that I should NOT give in, since he is nagging me. Or does it mean that I should<\/span> give in, to reward him for talking to me? Or does it mean I should NOT give in because I should be setting the terms of the household? Or does it mean I should<\/span> give in because here is something that Nat really likes to do, that is important to him?<\/p>\n

You see how you can really fardreit dein kopf<\/a> with this stuff. I chose the last option, because I like knowing what is important to Nat and honoring that, particularly since he asked me so nicely! So, together we did a few loads. Here there is always laundry to do, dust to pick up, food to buy, toilets to clean. You vant doit and drek? Ve got.<\/p>\n

Anyway, where was I? My tall yellow flower. Today our Home Based Therapist came to do more training and troubleshooting, basically to help me work on the IEP programs in our home. So for months we have been working on getting Nat to initiate with what he wants. The program is to walk within five feet or more of Nat, and without looking at him or cuing him, getting him to ask me for his pills. We have really gotten very far with this.<\/p>\n

Now, at school, they have been working on ways to get Nat to converse. I love the way they have done this. They help him by knowing him so well, and they are able to encourage accurate responses from him because of this. So Jessica came today to show us how to run Nat’s conversation programs. She brought this DVD of Nat working on conversing at school. I love the way his teacher is enjoying him, and he is right there with her. See if you can pick out the utterly age appropriate thing he does during the clip!