Posts Tagged typing with support
Yo, Adrian
Posted by Larry Blumenthal in Communicating on October 25, 2010
We had been at the sprawling horse farm for about 45 minutes, when the owners popped the question.
Do you think Clay would like to ride one of the horses?
Clay had loved almost everything about his trip on this sunny fall day so far, but we weren’t sure how he would answer that. Read the rest of this entry »
Nature Boy
Posted by Larry Blumenthal in Communicating, Daily Life on October 4, 2010
Clay loves the nature center near our house, so when we discovered one a couple towns over a few weeks back we figured it was worth a visit.
The first stop on the trail was a blind for bird watching.
My wife and I sat on chairs looking out through a wall-length picture window while Clay explored the room. Illustrations of birds ran above the glass. After a bit, the little guy joined us.
“What are your favorite birds?” my wife typed on the keyboard Clay uses to communicate. Read the rest of this entry »
Diving Butterfly
Posted by Larry Blumenthal in Communicating on September 13, 2010
The night before we met with Clay’s “team” at school last week, my wife told me a story. A story I hadn’t heard before. It explained how—after years of silence from the little guy—we wound up at our kitchen table preparing for a meeting to integrate a computer keyboard into his high school classroom.
A year ago, we didn’t know if Clay would be able to type. We weren’t completely sure if he could read. We certainly didn’t know he could do addition, subtraction and multiplication in his head. He hadn’t used speech to communicate in five years. I had my darker moments, but I don’t think my wife ever stopped believing that underneath Clay’s often distracted and hyperactive exterior lived a boy who was listening, learning and longing to do more with his life than he had thus far. She had spent a weekend at Syracuse University learning about typing with support. She read herself to sleep at night with books on the key techniques and stories of people with autism who had broken through the silence.
We had talked about the possibility of Clay learning to type, but hadn’t taken concrete action to get it started. Read the rest of this entry »
3,877 Hot Dogs
Posted by Larry Blumenthal in Communicating, Daily Life on September 3, 2010
This past Wednesday night, Clay was upstairs with the aide that works with him at home when I heard the robotic sound of the keyboard he uses to communicate.
“I am really hungry.”
Not surprisingly, moments later he and the aide tromped down the stairs to the kitchen, where I was chopping vegetables for dinner.
“What would you like to eat?” I asked. In her daily report, his teacher wrote that Clay was “very hungry” at school that day. He had been eating all afternoon, and already had inhaled a plateful of french fries. But it was 6 p.m., and I know he was looking for more.
“Hot dogs,” he typed.
“OK. How many do you want?” Read the rest of this entry »
So Sorry
Posted by Larry Blumenthal in Communicating, Daily Life on August 31, 2010
Clay is usually a happy-go-lucky kind of guy, so it got our attention when he was visibly upset one day last week with the aide that works with him at home.
The county provides us with a TSS (therapeutic staff support), who works with Clay four or five days each week. One TSS left about a month ago, and our new guy is still getting his feet wet. He is doing a great job, but transitions are tough. He and Clay are still figuring each other out, circling one another like heavyweight boxers in the first round of a championship bout.
The biggest issue came when the TSS showed up 30-minutes earlier than usual. Not a big deal, except I forgot to warn Clay, so he was already caught off guard on a day when he wasn’t feeling 100 percent. Bad start. Read the rest of this entry »
Life With Clay 
