Hope!

I read once that the hardest part of hope is the waiting. 

Truer words have never been spoken.

When I look at Porter and I see his words twisting and turning under his tongue it lifts me up and breaks my heart at the same time. I keep saying " You're words are almost ready..." I see his frustration, no, I feel his frustration.

It isn't fair.

It really isn't.

But if I sat and thought about that all day what would that accomplish? Nothing.

So instead, we celebrate the gains, however small or however tall and we keep on trucking.   

I have said before that one of the main reasons I started this blog was to help keep track of all of the progress Porter has made. So I thought today I would share some things we have been working on. It is going to be so nice looking back at this in a year or two and see how much he has grown.

We started PECS around the first of March . For anyone who isn't familiar, it is basically using pictures to communicate your needs 

( Picture Exchange Communication System). The first step was to get him to give us a picture in exchange for something he wanted...and that part is key...it must be something he really wants. We tried things like bubbles and balloons but his biggest motivator seems to be food! So it took a little while but he began trading the picture for the food item. 

 The next step was to move the picture around the house ( making sure he could see where we put it) so that he would have to look for it, because in the end, the goal is that he will bring us the picture of whatever he wants. We also started putting the pictures on a binder because that is where we plan to store all of his pictures so he will be able to access them quickly. 

Right now we are working on picking a preferred item over a non preferred item so that he learns to discriminate between different pictures, because up until now, I don't think he has really even been looking at the pictures. He just knows that if I pass this picture, I get what I want!  This part hasn't been going well, he has been passing both pictures and we have had to take a step back...but today...a breakthrough! He got it! 

He had these two choices:

I was armed with both the bowl of grapes and the sock and my hand was out, ready to receive a picture. At first he picked up both like usual, so we started over and this time he picked the sock so that is what he got...a stinky old sock. Well, it's not really stinky, it's clean... but still just a sock. Usually this is where we have an unhappy boy, but this time,  I swear, I could see it, it clicked! And he passed me the picture of grapes. Again and again.

Big day! HUGE!

And that folks, is what hope is made of.

Have a great weekend:)

:) Rae