What's a Prompt?

[Guest guest]

Was the question Lou asked at Robbie's IEP this morning.

Sigh.

I am sure he knows what a prompt is. He was just making trouble.

You see, I arrived five minutes early. And he arrived five minutes late. They

got started as soon as I was there, although I did mention that Lou would be

coming. The district wide representative probably has a busy calendar and

Robbie's IEP is very boring and issue-less. I was actually afraid he would no

longer qualify for the program as his speech has improved enormously. However,

at his conference in March, which Lou did not attend because he was in jail, I

expressed some language concerns that I had. First, he is still pretty hard to

understand when he is speaking in long sentences and when he is upset. And,

secondly, he has receptive language gaps. They are fairly minor, but I am aware

of them as Putter has taught me to be very sensitive to such problems. Kim,

Robbie's teacher, agreed at the conference that she saw these gaps sometimes

too. Robbie's speech therapist, , was not so sure, but she said that

Robbie is in such a structured environment with his speech therapy that he

probably knows what is expected of him and such gaps would not be very apparent.

So today at Robbie's IEP told me, looking at me, and not at Lou, that

she had done some testing on Robbie to try to pinpoint those gaps. It was

casual testing, not done for any formal assessment, but just as a sort of

baseline attempt to figure out what is going on. Robbie's receptive language

was 3.3 years and his expressive was 2.8; he turned four in February so the gaps

are definitely not my imagination, although he has met 100% of his IEP goals

from last year and he is doing quite well.

Lou was already angry that we had started without him. He began questioning

closely about this testing. He asked to see the test and then pointed

out that she hadn't administered all of the questions. Someone pointed out that

once you found that he missed a couple of the questions, there was not really a

need to ask any more. It was embarrassing to me and totally threw who

actually at the end of the IEP told Lou that she felt that he was unhappy that

she had administered this test. " Oh, no, " said Lou, " You just showed it to

Salli and not to me. I just wanted to make you understand that I was

interested. "

Not so much in Robbie, in my opinion, as in Lou and his RIGHTS!

Boo, hiss.

Then Kim passed out her goals for Robbie for next year. Lou was still feeling

confrontational apparently because he started grilling Kim on her first goal for

Robbie which was

o will respond to techer questions during group activities with 3 to 5

word sentences with verbal prompts.

" What, " asked Lou, former professor of English, " Is a verbal prompt? " I am

trying not to roll my eyes visibly here, but HONESTLY. He has an autistic child

who was in an ABA program for nearly three years and HE DOESN'T KNOW WHAT A

VERBAL PROMPT IS?

Geez.

Well, he did know, I am sure, but he pressed her and pressed her for examples

and illustrations. She was rather flustered (I imagine it felt like an attack),

but she answered his questions.

Then another goal:

o will recall 3 sequential events of a classroom activity or story in

correct order given visual and/or verbal prompts.

Now Lou needed to know what a visual prompt was. Take reading the kids a story,

for instance, what would be the visual prompts.

I am thinking to myself " Duh! " and so probably is Kim, but she is also thrown by

the possibility that Lou might actually mean something with his questions. She

can't really just say, " The pictures, you idiot! " But she says that she would

show them the pictures. " Well, " wonders Lou, " Would you point to the pictures

or would you also say what they pictures were? " " Probably both, " I say. " But, "

says Lou, through his teeth, " I wasn't asking YOU! " Kim responds quietly that

she would probably both point and say.

A few more questions and Lou is satisified that his rights are being met and

that he is not left out.

Very uncomfortable meeting after he arrived and it was all completely

unnecessary.

Salli