Augmentative Evaluation

Daniel had an extensive evaluation this week through Children's Hospital of Michigan to see if he is ready to learn some sort of "communication". I say, ABOUT TIME, as I am sure he would too if he could talk! I am sure he is getting tired of me picking the wrong things that he doesn't want to do. :)

The therapist said he is doing wonderfully with the eye gazing and PECS that we have been doing with him. We decided to try some of this stuff at home on our own and it seems to have worked to our benefit. She was impressed, which is always nice. He was able to acknowledge pictures that she wanted him to look at. For example, she would blow bubbles and then ask him to look at a few pictures (one containing bubbles, of course). He would look at the picture of bubbles and then look at her. We were very proud of Daniel, he did awesome. Then she also had him selecting things by pressing buttons that would say phrases. She had two buttons with two pictures, one for "I want to play with bubbles" and the second with "I want to play music" (both are winners with Daniel, so no matter what he picked he would have been happy). But he selected and figured out that what he looked at last was what he was going to get.

Then last but not least, Daniel got to use the computer, which I might add, really impressed Dad! She wheeled him up to an adjustable table and put the computer monitor within arms reach. It was a touch screen monitor, so when Daniel would touch the screen it would play music for a few seconds, then turn off. He learned quickly that to get the music (he LOVES music) to play he had to reach up and touch the screen again. That's my smart little boy!

So, that was Part 1 of his evaluation. She said she wanted to see how well he would do with joysticks and figuring those out. I already know he'll do wonderful because he figured out how to use it very quickly with the powered wheelchair!!