Non-verbal child and character M&Gs

[Nevada Jen]

Your DD sounds a lot like mine. FWIW, I hated PECS. My DD did love the autograph book. Handing them her book (more like hurling it at them in some instances!) was one of her favorite things about Disney early on. I will be interested to see how the cards work for you.

 

[sweetpeama]

I have a 9 year old daughter who has multiple disabilities including profound apraxia. We have been told by her therapy team that realistically she will more in likely never be able to use speech to communicate beyond a handful of words most of which are very segmented. She uses a combination of sign language and proloque2go on the ipad with a dynavox maestro and PECS Cards that have words written on them to go with the pictures as a back up system. We take at least one back up to the ipad when we travel.
So far we have only been able to make 1 trip to WDW when she was 27.5 months old. The only character she was really interested in and wanted an autograph from was Minnie Mouse ( we got other ones for her). She was able to let Minnie know by holding out her autograph book and signing Please.

OP if you can I would recommend purchasing an ipad that your family will own for her and purchasing the Proloque2go. Even though you won't use it at the time get the bundle that includes prologue4text along with 3 other apps 2 which teach keyboarding ( one is designed for elementary to middle school the other for middle school to high school) because the money you will save over purchasing them individually in the future is worth it. Once you have them purchased they stay on your cloud. We have pulled up prologue2go on a my 11 year old daughter's ipad though it was a bit slow due to being an older version and less storage space overall. You will also then own both the device and the app so you will have more control as to what is put on it so if you want to put words used in a religious setting for what ever reason say your going to a coming of age ceremony for someone of a certain religion and you want her to be able to congratulate the person on the accomplishment if you own it opposed to the school district owning it ( when you say preschool I am making the assumption that it is a preschool program ran under part B services for children between the ages of 3 to school age that either have a documented special needs or are at risk for a disability based on the laws of your state) and even having to go through this again when she ages out of those services. By owning the ipad you will also be able to have other apps as needed such as reading rainbow ( while you can't change any of the 5 books in the backpack when your not connected to the internet you can read the ones that are in there or using earphones ( in public) to have it read to you as you follow along) which can keep a child entertained during travel.

 

[DopeyDame]

As I said earlier we are working on multiple avenues for her communication. She is under the care of a wonderful private SLP and has a great team working with her both at school and privately .

Big hugs, OP! Just wanted to say that I totally get what you're trying to do and I think it's awesome. DS doesn't have apraxia, but he did have a really significant speech and language delay. In general people seem really used to speech delays, but have a much harder time understanding expressive language delays. My son's very first IEP goal with his SLP was to initiate and reciprocate interaction of any sort - just like you're talking about. I remember being totally befuddled that his SLP was rolling a ball back and forth with him. But of course, it was what he needed - taking turns interacting with someone. He's now in second grade and still in speech therapy but can communicate quite well with strangers and family alike. Hang in there.

As for the card, like a PP said, I'd make it way more simple. Maybe even just, "Hi, my name is ____" That will allow her to initiate the interaction and allow the character to say "Hi, ____!" and realize what's going on. I'd be concerned that if it's any more wordy than that, the character may get confused in the rush to try to read it all and might not really understand what you want them to do.

Good luck and I'd love to hear how it went when you get back.

 

[Angel Ariel]

I have a 9 year old daughter who has multiple disabilities including profound apraxia. We have been told by her therapy team that realistically she will more in likely never be able to use speech to communicate beyond a handful of words most of which are very segmented. She uses a combination of sign language and proloque2go on the ipad with a dynavox maestro and PECS Cards that have words written on them to go with the pictures as a back up system. We take at least one back up to the ipad when we travel.
So far we have only been able to make 1 trip to WDW when she was 27.5 months old. The only character she was really interested in and wanted an autograph from was Minnie Mouse ( we got other ones for her). She was able to let Minnie know by holding out her autograph book and signing Please.

OP if you can I would recommend purchasing an ipad that your family will own for her and purchasing the Proloque2go. Even though you won't use it at the time get the bundle that includes prologue4text along with 3 other apps 2 which teach keyboarding ( one is designed for elementary to middle school the other for middle school to high school) because the money you will save over purchasing them individually in the future is worth it. Once you have them purchased they stay on your cloud. We have pulled up prologue2go on a my 11 year old daughter's ipad though it was a bit slow due to being an older version and less storage space overall. You will also then own both the device and the app so you will have more control as to what is put on it so if you want to put words used in a religious setting for what ever reason say your going to a coming of age ceremony for someone of a certain religion and you want her to be able to congratulate the person on the accomplishment if you own it opposed to the school district owning it ( when you say preschool I am making the assumption that it is a preschool program ran under part B services for children between the ages of 3 to school age that either have a documented special needs or are at risk for a disability based on the laws of your state) and even having to go through this again when she ages out of those services. By owning the ipad you will also be able to have other apps as needed such as reading rainbow ( while you can't change any of the 5 books in the backpack when your not connected to the internet you can read the ones that are in there or using earphones ( in public) to have it read to you as you follow along) which can keep a child entertained during travel.

We will be getting her an ipad and software ourselves as well. The school one is likely to come through first, just because of logistics, and neither was going to be available in time for the trip, so this was an interim measure for us.

 

[Angel Ariel]

I'll write a better post in a few days, but I just wanted to pop in and say that the cards worked out fantastically well. I made them more generic, like Sue's suggestion (thank you @SueM in MN for your help!), with favorite foods/activities..that kind of thing. I had a couple of different versions, and I read through the cards with DD while in line for each face character (we didn't use them with fur characters), and DD chose which one she wanted to give. The characters were *amazing* with her. We were never rushed...the characters all spent a lot of time with her, and the information on the cards - whether it was a favorite activity (like music class or playdough) or food (like cookies) - helped spark really fun and memorable interactions with each character.

We saw one of the photopass people (who had taken pictures of our meet with Spider-Man) at DL the day after, and she recognized us and DD and told us that all of the CMs that were present (there were like 4 or 5 including Spidey) were talking about DD's meet with Spidey the rest of the night.

While I am positive that our interactions would have been great without the cards as well, as the characters at Disneyland are amazing, they really did add something special to each meeting and I'm glad that we did it.

 

[DisneyOma]

So far we have only been able to make 1 trip to WDW when she was 27.5 months old.

27.5 months? Is that a typo?

 

[sweetpeama]

27.5 months? Is that a typo?

Not a typo she was 3 months and 2 weeks past her 2nd birthday chronologically and about 14 months developmentally when we traveled. ( 2 years x 12 months per year plus the time past equals 27.5 months) Due to various therapists and doctors using her age in months to see how delayed she is at a given testing time I don't think of her being 2 on the trip. Now that she is older I think of her more along the lines of her age or her age and a half especially since the evaluations are not done as often as they were back then.