Dr Ron Leaf - Free ABA Introduction in London

[StarlightMcKenzie]

www.autismpartnership.co.uk/uk_workshops.php

disclaimer: I have never bought services from Autism Partnership and do not work for them. This is purely for information for those that might be interested to find out more about ABA for free.

My 'personal' opinion is that this geezer is worth listening to having read some of his stuff.

One o the worst things I saw was a child use his pecs repeatedly to request a particular noisy toy at an 'opportunity class'. The staff got so fed up with it, they removed the picture for it.

When the resultant meltdown occured the staff explained to the parents that it was triggered by his ability to communicate.

Yet they failed to realise that they themselves had just taken away his voice.

That sounds appropriate.
Yes, Star, absolutely nuts isn't it?
I always use the example of a Caribbean cruise.
I may not get it but I can ask as many times as I like. That's my absolute right until I get a clear signal that it isn't available.

Oh and Dev, the whole 'makes a child lazy thing.
Lazy???

What do you think is easier?
Opening your mouth and making a noise or picking up a PECS book, leafing throguh it, finding the picture(s), placing them on a strip, removing the strip, going over to someone, removing the strip, giving it to the adult and awaiting a response.

Believe you me, if he was able to voice his needs?thoughts he would, if only to avoid all of that hard work!
It is interesting to see children grow out of PECS as they gradually work out that the response effort for PECS is greater than that for speech but by that stage, the expert PECS implementor (of which there are sadly too few) has shaped up sounds beautifully anyway.

Be very wary of s/lts who say they understand PECS use. 95% don't.
Same goes for behaviour analysts.
You would be better off spending money on private consultations from Julia or the other trainers (Zena Barton is great too-very no nonsense) than wasting valuable time, effort and money on someone who is clueless.

Our experience with PECS was that basically we did it all at home. The SS supposedly used PECS but predictably, this was just putting banana and strawberry symbols on the table at snack time.

We kept telling them we had a book for DS at home and that he was up to stage 4 (or whatever it was) but nothing they promised actually happened.

For about 5 months we worked though the stages until we reached the sentence strip and 'I want item'. No words, but I was at least glad he was starting to show some wants and needs.

Then the moment I introduced the sentence strip and he had to do the whole rigmarole of pointing to each symbol in turn, he just said 'Ownt cwackwers' ("I want crackers"). It just came out, just like that. I was

These kids are clever and I suspect he'd simply got to the point of thinking, blow that for a laugh, I'll just do what she wants and get it over with.

What it did mean is that we've started ABA at an advantage - no need for signs and he's galloping through expressive labels.

star at that. sometimes words are just not enough.

moondog, schobe I hadn't thought of it like that. Like you mentioned schobe I just had this image in my head of a child asking for a banana or something using a picture and thats all. Using picture strip for communication which is rather more difficult never occurred to me.

Dev, I'm expecing kids to use 3 or 4 pictures at a time to create a sntence.
We move on very fast from sinlge picture stage to the sentence strip.

Is this why sign language is so helpful? DS did lots of sing and sign with me as a toddler, + I noticed that the BSL he learns at his current school (has a deaf unit) has really boosted his receptive understanding. Asking cos I wonder if a bog standard mainstream school with a deaf unit would be a better choice than an ASD unit when we move.

(Only recently become familiar with what actually goes on daily in our local ASD unit and have gone from being green with envy at those that secured places for their kids their to bloody grateful, due to the "sensory room" approach).

It's a nadded stimulus Boc, so very helpful.
All sensory rooms need to be blown to infinity.Nothing more than an excuse for staff to loll about and do nothing.I always maintain that every sensory room is accessorised by an assistant flicking through a Next catalogue.

Thankfully not the case in the great schools I work in but depressingly prevalent still.

moondog, how long on average will it take a child to get the concept of using PECS?

Depends entirely on the child and what you mean by getting PECS.
Two main elements.
Grasping that you need to make contact with another to get your needs met and then understanding what a picture means.

I've seen some kids get the entire six phases in a matter of days. Other may take much longer.

Dev - if you don't have access to widgits for symbols (expensive), I can email/dropbox you all the ones I produced. Might save you some time.

schobe you have PM.

Dev, DS at 3 got to stage 4 in an afternoon. He was verbal but didn't have any communication.

moondog out of the two elements you listed, Ds knows the first very well, but the second just does not seem to be clicking. For eg when we were teaching signing, he knew that he had to do something to get what he wants, he could just never figure out what it was, same with PECS. Doesn't matter how quickly we got in to model it for him. I guess we just have to persevere.

star that's encouraging, I have just looked up at the stages and I will be happy if we could get to stage 2. Just realised we already have pictures of all the items he comes in contact with daily as we have been working on labelling. so will give PECS a go tomorrow. Wish me luck.

The great thing about PECS is that it can be a very gradual and consistent transition into picture discrimination.

It's a subtle process moving from just one PECS symbol (could just be blank, they don't even need to notice there's a picture on it) to choosing between two. It's important someone you're working with is properly trained if that step might prove tricky imo.

What pecs taught DS was to communicate TO someone, and for him to be clear WHO TO, and if they are distracted get their attention first.

Also, pecs gives the child a 'menu' of things they can access rather than them being required to think abstractly from an infinate choice.

My DS LOVED his pecs book because of what became available to him.

Even though he was verbal.

Dev, unlike signing, PECS uses a physical prompt but it is given from behind the child (you need to prompters in the early stages) and is very quickly faded in a way that the child is hardly aware of it in the first place.
Remember the golden rule: every prompt you put in also needs to be faded and fast otherwise the child becomes prompt dependent. The danger with your persevering with what doesn't seem to be working at present is that your prompts are evidently not being faded and you are all stuck in a frustrating rut.

From what you say, your child's needs are different to Star's but I like her astute comment that he was verbal but had no communication.
PECS can help many different kinds of children in many ways. It's like helping a car out of a big muddy puddle. Revving the engine more anf more just gets the wheels spinning and mud flying everywhere. You need a tow rope to pull oyu out of it altogether.

It is also very useful for children with Down's Syndrome, many who have tonnes to say but such poor motor planning and working memory issues that they need help with setting it all out in a coherent order.
They see it all down on a strip

eg 'I see' (a) 'small' 'white' 'cat' (4 pictures)
'I want' (a) 'red' 'jar of paint' (and a) 'long' 'paintbrush' (5 pictures)

They have a permanent visual record which backs up and supports verbalisation

two prompters

I'd stress that you will not be able to implement PECS properly without going on a course (2 dayer) and then having some expert help with it.
It is not possible to implement it without this level of assistance so do not attempt it alone or you will find yuorself in a big mess.

Oh and if you have a behaviour analyst telling you that they can help you with it, I'd back away very quickly as even very competent ones will not know what they are doing and will not be able to resist thnking they are cleverer than Bondy & Frost (they are not) and can mess about with the stages.

Bondy is a behaviour analyst and Frost is an s/lt and I believe that this mix of skills and disciplines is the most powerful one of all for any child with developmental communication issues.

Can I just say thank you so much for this thread and in particular to Moondog for her expertise and generosity in sharing it (I'm a bit of a groupie since the B'ham workshop last year!)

We were advised over a year ago to drop PECs in favour of signing since this seemed to be my DDs "natural communication style" and indeed, she definitely seemed to pick up signing quickly. However, we're now at the stage where her signing vocab isn't wide enough and her fine motor skills are limiting the differentiation of signs, such that she has the same sign for 4 items (fine at home where the context generally helps us get what she wants, but no good elsewhere...)

We've now been advised to look at some sort of AAC device for her. This thread tho has me wondering whether we should go back to PECs and get that embedded as a pre-cursor to moving onto a picture based comms programme on a device?

Does that make sense - I'd really appreciate the benefit of others' experiences.

Threads like this are great. We can help each other out.
Mess, can't remember who you are in RL but hello.

Signing is great, PECS is great.
Both have their advantages and disadvantages.
You have to be really careful with A/AC.
It's all too easy to spend £££ on something that is never used.
I'm doing a lot with A/AC at present but the amount of time, energy, effort, commitment and specifying of SMART goals is huge. Put one can't-be-bothered teacher or LSA into the mix and it will all crumble.
I'd want at least 1 year of solid data on PECS use before moving to A/AC. I then advocate continuing to track it on a standard celeration chart so functional use can be monitored.

PMed you back messmonster!

If anyone else has need of my, quite frankly amateurish, PECS symbols, please don't hesitate to ask. I love the idea of them being useful and saving someone else the time.