I’m the Nana. I don’t live with my daughter, her husband and their 3 yo autistic son. They are due any day to have a daughter. Both work full time in very stressful jobs and are in the military reserves. I take my garland on to external therapies 3 times a week and try to lighten their load as much as possible y running errands for them. They just don’t have the bandwidth to dedicate large amounts of time …. I want to help more but am not sure how. I’m retired and my husband is soon to be retired. We’d like to take trips from time to time and I know that’s important for us, but at the same time I want to help my grandson. He is pre verbal. We’re making some headway with sign language but I’m finding when he wants something he does all the signs he knows at one time. Haven’t started potty training yet. They want to focus on that while on maternity leave when she hopes to have more dedicated time. Just looking for suggestions
Answer:
How ofter do you have your grandbaby? I know take him to therapy 3x a week but does that mean you have him 3 full days?
If he's going through all the signs you can do a sit session and bring one item out and practice the one item for 10 mins. For example if you have a sign for cookie and you know that is what he wants, I would break the cookie into pieces and prompt him with the correct sign, either hand over hand or imitation and then wait just for that. If he starts with cookie and others signs after, I would stop his hands and immediate reward after the cookie. I'd take each sign and breakdown like this in a little intentional session and see how you do. Another option is PECS. You can also do pictures if you feel the signs are too complex for him. To do PECS (Picture Exchange System) I would go around the house and take actual pictures of the things he asks for and make cards with velcro on the back and put in a book. Here is a good example of how it could look but there's a gazillion ways to do this:
https://youtu.be/VN3L3U822uE?si=L3AAevzDaV2mIcq9
How ofter do you have your grandbaby? I know take him to therapy 3x a week but does that mean you have him 3 full days?
If he’s going through all the signs you can do a sit session and bring one item out and practice the one item for 10 mins. For example if you have a sign for cookie and you know that is what he wants, I would break the cookie into pieces and prompt him with the correct sign, either hand over hand or imitation and then wait just for that. If he starts with cookie and others signs after, I would stop his hands and immediate reward after the cookie. I’d take each sign and breakdown like this in a little intentional session and see how you do. Another option is PECS. You can also do pictures if you feel the signs are too complex for him. To do PECS (Picture Exchange System) I would go around the house and take actual pictures of the things he asks for and make cards with velcro on the back and put in a book. Here is a good example of how it could look but there’s a gazillion ways to do this:
https://youtu.be/VN3L3U822uE?si=L3AAevzDaV2mIcq9