Touch Screen, a photo by here we wander on Flickr.
For a while now, we have been thinking about ways to help Sawyer communicate. Words are few and far between for him, and though he seems to understand most everything you say, he certainly isn't volunteering anything yet. We're even pretty sure he understands most of the basic signs we try to use in addition to our words, but his signing also is pretty limited. His most effective communication is still taking your hand and pulling you to the location of what he thinks he wants or needs and then pointing to it or taking your hand and tossing it in the direction of the desired item. He also vigorously signs "more," which has sadly replaced "please" and the once "more, please" sign.
One of the things we've tried working with him on - still with little success - is using the mouse on a computer. You see, all of our boys love the computer, and while Sawyer is often content to watch Xander or even Connor as they manipulate the mouse and the home computer, he simply doesn't seem to understand that his hand will also work that mouse. We've tried lots of hand-over-hand, but he still won't touch it. He puts your hand back on the mouse and proceeds to point at the screen (thinking, we assume, of his touch-screen computer at school, which he operates with ease).
With that in mind, we talked about getting a touch-screen monitor for home. But they can be pretty expensive, and it would just be useful when we're at the house. So we did a little more research and started thinking about a more portable option. A touch-screen laptop was our first thought, but then we quickly moved on to the new tablets. Smaller, more portable, and many are starting to come out with some pretty impressive communication software. We're still doing the research on that end, about which software we think might be most helpful. There is a lot to consider, the costs range from minor to more than the average house payment, and we have a lot of different people we need to get in on that discussion - many of whom we haven't really worked with yet.
Changes. They do not come easily in our house, but lately it seems like we are full of them. The boys will all be moving to a new neighborhood school in a few months. The twins are leaving behind a wonderful preschool and an amazing team of teachers and therapists we would love to bottle up and take with us everywhere we go. But the real world doesn't work that way, so we're going to have to get used to new teachers and new therapists and a whole new team. And because this is a team that will largely be in place for the next six years or so, we need their input.
And because we're just so big on change lately, we're also taking it one step further. Up until this point, both Sawyer and Xander received their therapies first through a state program for developmental delays and then through the local school system. We have never moved beyond those services, largely because our schedule and our finances simply would not allow for it. But times have changed, and we think the boys need more help than they can get in the classroom or through the schools. The boys have an appointment next week for a speech therapy evaluation (because apparently they have to be evaluated before they can even be seen, despite the fact that they both have a clear diagnosis and enough documentation to make up a forest, but lets not get me started on the topic of evaluations and diagnosis and how need is determined in a completely different way for every single provider). Once the evaluation is completed, we expect therapy to follow. We hope that their new speech therapist will be a part of their team for the foreseeable future, and that means we want their opinion on the many different communication software options.
For now, we have a tablet with lots of possibilities for communication and the future. It is mostly for Sawyer, who is touched a little more deeply by autism and whose need has always been a little bit greater. That is not to say that we will not look into one for Xander at a later date, especially if it proves useful with Sawyer or if Xander's team thinks he might benefit from one. We are taking it slow, trying to weigh the positives and negatives of using a communication device.
But right now, in this moment, we simply have a new touch-screen computer that can be used at home or anywhere else (with wi-fi for some of the features). Sawyer is already displaying an aptitude for moving around the interface and getting to programs of his choice. He also is already displaying an ownership and possessiveness which is a little scary (see here).
One can hardly blame him though. As useful and functional as we think and hope it will be for him in terms of communication - it's also simply a lot of fun! All of us (with the exception of Connor who is on extended vacation at the lake, poor boy) have taken it for a test drive, and no one wants to put it down.
More screens. That part doesn't really make me happy. But I like to think that one day soon I will change my mind. I am waiting for the day when my quiet little boy tells us more than just what he wants - to eat, to drink, to swing or jump on the trampoline. I want to know what he thinks, how he feels, what he dreams about. And if the words are not there, then I want to help him express himself any way that he can.
And if it takes another screen (or two if Xander eventually needs one), then that's what we'll do.