Re: Getting son to look down!

[Guest guest]

At 10:03 PM 11/7/00 -0000, tedeileen@... wrote:

>When working with my son at the table, one of the biggest issues we

>deal with is getting him to look DOWN at what ever he's working on

>(puzzle, blocks,etc). Our consultant suggested working behind him,

>tilting his head down while he works. Now she was able to do this

>pretty smoothly, but I've tried it and it comes out pretty klutzy.

>My little guy still requires lots of physical prompting and it's tuff

>to do both (tilting and prompting). Also, from behind it's tuff to

>tell whether he's looking down or not. My guy loves faces, and he

>likes to look at the person working with him rather than the object

>he's working on. After reading recent post about scanning the field,

>I tried angling the puzzle a little, but still fixated on my face!

>Should i keep working on tilting and prompting from behind?

>Any other suggestions are appreciated!

>

>Eileen, Fl.

>

I will send the catalog numbers, but I know people who have had great

success using a slant board. It tilts the material for you. Also, if needed

use much larger pictures or if or if you are using objects use a small

stool and set it up so he hardly has to look down at first. My son is also

a face guy, and we had to teach him to attend to the material by making the

material interesting and in fact, you could even use pictures of people he

knows and cares about to teach the skill. I have no idea what he is working

on, but say it is matching or receptive labeling or starting to tact, you

could have two or three pictures of maybe family members and therapists he

has come to enjoy's company.

Jennie

[Guest guest]

Dear Eileen and list:

I am the Mom who posted the scanning problem. We spent an entire weekend

charting my son's behavior to determine why he was not scanning. This is

what we found. If I sat to his left he would get 100% on the center and left

objects, but a zero on the right hand object. Just for clarification we are

not doing ten trails, these were percentages within a VB module mixed with

tasks other than receptive discrimination. If we moved the missed object or

card to the center or right. He correctly touched it out of an array of

three. Move to the left side and the reverse happened. My son was

restricting his field of vision to where ever the therapist was sitting. We

resolved this by taping his favorite reinforcer (candy corns) in front of the

object on the opposite side from where the therapist was sitting. Then faded

it to behind the object then not at all. Perhaps this might strengthen the

EO (motivation) for your child. I believe this is the key. We also put an

empty box beside my son, so that after he finished the array he could throw

them into the box. He found this reinforcing. He was motivated to quickly

and correctly touch the requested item so that he could throw them into the

box. We tried all of the suggestions that we got. This is a modified version

of several suggestions from the list. This is just one suggestion, someone

else may have a better way to strengthen the EO. On Monday we found

something else out sitting directly in front of him expands his scanning to

cover all three objects. But this is a very hard position to prompt (my son

knew the objects he just wouldn't look over, so prompting is not an issue)

from. Your therapists will have to be quick. Hope this helps.

Tammy

PS A BIG THANK YOU TO ALL WHO RESPONDED TO MY POST!