You Don't Say

Angelman Syndrome, AAC and everything in between

Now we are talking

There’s no such thing as too old.

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We experienced every possible reason, no, I need to say, every possible excuse as to why our daughter could not use a high-tech AAC device. Today’s post by Speak for yourself sounds like our story. What I want to emphasize is “your child is never too old to learn”.  You may have to change their way of thinking. You will have to change your way of thinking too.

During the seizure years, Jess learned at a very slow rate. It was very difficult to watch her peers reach milestones, much less watch younger children do all the things she couldn’t with ease. [Read more…] about There’s no such thing as too old.

Catching them when they fall

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IMG_9426When children are small, we catch them when they fall. In our case, my daughter Jessie fell. She fell a lot. She had bruises up and down her shins and everywhere else that made contact with the ground. We caught her when we could. As she got older, rushing to scoop her up seemed to create more drama, so we learned to take her lead. She learned how to pick herself up and keep moving (this does not mean that I ignored her, I just didn’t rush to her in a panic). [Read more…] about Catching them when they fall

Tiny milestones

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Jessie has many nicknames, one is destructress. You can see the path where she has been.

Last night a package of tin foil popped out of the kitchen cabinet on to the floor. I was working on the computer so didn’t get up. Later Jess walked by, stopped and then proceeded to put this item where it belonged! Is this my daughter?

Just now, when I had finished a chore, she then told me via SFY “good job”. I do appreciate her comment. I appreciate seeing that her awareness level is emerging!

Oh my, now she just complimented herself by saying that she did an amazing job feeding the dog!  This looks to be a good night for conversation.

Going rogue; how we found SFY

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Beginning …..January 2011

The end of May, we decided not to replace the Dynavox. It was temperamental and their updated version was more difficult to program. To top it off, we could not afford to support it when Jess aged out of school. We could not afford to buy a $9,000 device every four years either. Because the Dynavox wasn’t user-friendly, Jess realized it was easier for her to use gestures. For us, the underlining problem with the Dynavox was when Jess had more to say, she had to navigate through too many layers, it got complicated.  She lost interest.

The Dynavox. This was taken when she first got the device. Notice hand over hand, this is so wrong

Back in January, Jess had been evaluated for other AAC devices. They said no to PQ2G and  I don’t recall what they suggested, but they definitely did not recommend using an iPad due to her poor fine motor skills,  and her distractibility.  Even so, the only thing I had seen at this point was Proloquo2go.  Something about it seemed not appropriate for Jess who was now 20. [Read more…] about Going rogue; how we found SFY