DTT vs. VB

[Guest guest]

Thanks to everyone who has responded. You've given me alot to think

about.

Just a little history: My daughter was diagnosed with ASD just a few

months before her 3rd birthday. At that time we'd been participating

in our local Infant & Todds program and she was attending a special

ed school 2 half days a week. Her teacher, God Bless her, started

doing DTT with Mari of her own accord - and it was then that we began

to see improvement.

Being depressed at the diagnosis and anxious to help Mari, I started

our home program last summer with what little knowledge I could glean

from the Maurice book, a couple of others and what I

researched on the internet. I found 2 special ed students at the

University of land (where we live) to work with us. They had a

little experience with DTT since they had done student teaching at

the school Mari attended and both had done some limited work in other

home programs. Neither my knowledge or theirs was extensive, but we

went with what we had. It was crude and rudimentary at best - but

even so - we saw Mari make significant gains in her cognitive and

fine motor skills. By the time school started in the fall, she'd

mastered most of her cognitive goals and many of her fine motor ones.

Then we hit a wall. I didn't know enough to take our program any

further and decided I absolutely had to bring in a consultant. I'd

just learned of VB and was reading about the results others were

having with it - so I found an area VB consultant to help us.

She was a very good therapist - in that for the first time, we

witnessed Mari producing sounds on requests. We'd started signing

with Mari several months prior at the recommendation of the teacher

at her special ed school. The VB consultant was pro-signing and Mari

having been exposed to it, picked it up nicely.

We know that Mari can learn with both DTT and VB. We've done our

ABLLS - so we know where she's falling skill wise. She's hyperglexic

and can read words. Most skills she generalizes pretty easily -

except using sign or vocalization to mand. She still points or pulls

you to what she wants. We (I - dear hubby is slow to catch on, but

he's trying), do require her to attempt the sign and to imitate the

sound when she wants something.

The challenge is getting her to open up - to want to learn from her

environment - getting her to mand via sign or vocalization

spontaneously.

Is this a reasonable expectation at this point in the game?

We go for walks and because I've labelled and identified things - she

knows what they are - but you won't know that she knows unless you

ask her. She never spontaneously wants to know about anything it

seems - but if we tell her, she stores it and has great recall.

Again, thanks to everyone who has emailed me off-list. I'm going

through each one reading and trying to understand more.

We've decided to pull Mari out of the county autism program, so we

want to make sure we have a robust home program. I think this

kid can fly, if we can get her turned around and tuned in. I guess

every parent is optimistic and I'm no different. At least, if it

doesn't work out that way, we can say we did everything we could and

it was not meant to be.

No matter what, we accept, love and enjoy the beautiful gift we've

been given in our daughter.

Happy New Years to All,

Shyvetta Brewster