Thursday, December 15, 2011

Picture Exchange Communication: Phase 2

As I mentioned previously, our therapist is a strong believer in Picture Exchange Communication aka PECS.  There a multiple phases involved when implementing PECs.  The first phase I discussed in a post here. In Phase 1, you are still working with one picture.  You still give them picture and help them exchange the picture for the item.  This is with you sitting right there in front of them.  During this phase, I had Ellie in her high chair to keep her corralled.

Yesterday, my super genius little Bear decided to implement Phase 2 on her own.

The other day I made a PECS board using poster board, Velcro, and different PECs of toys.   I then taped the board onto a shelf in the kitchen.  Anyway, Ellie fully understands that giving me the iPad PEC results in her getting to use the iPad.  She has not, however, generalized it to other toys (i.e. giving me the crayon PEC yields her getting to play with crayons).  However, Ellie has discovered that she can remove the picture from the board, bring it to me in any room of the house and she will then get to play with the iPad.  This is called Phase 2.



In Phase 2, you teach the child that she can grab the picture on her own and bring it to you in another part of the house.  It is a very slow painstaking process because you literally start off by moving only a few inches away from the child and then progressively mover farther and farther away until you are out of the room.  This is a hard concept, hence why it is a painstaking process that requires so much patience (which I never seem to have enough of!).

Hopefully soon, Ellie will start to generalize and we can expand our repertoire of pictures.





Photobucket

7 comments:

  1. Go Ellie!

    Have you thought of a felt board? Might be easier to put pictures back and add more as time goes by with the velcro, as she/you won't have to stick them in a particular spot. Plus felt boards are just super fun.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ellie what a clever little girl you are!

    ReplyDelete
  3. What a smartie pants she is! I love seeing her little feet in these pics, Emily doesn't have the sandle gap like most kids with Downs do, so I am just a little bit jealous ;-)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Ooh, I like the felt board idea! Thanks Maria!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Ellie looks like she is perfecting PECS! we love the PECS...Maddie has picked up on it very fast...and the IPOD not sure how we lived without it...we are working on the discrimination of the pictures...sometimes Maddie is so stink'n fast and does not look before she makes a request! I have put velcro up around the house and placed the cards that go with the requests needed...it has worked pretty well..i guess the book overwhelms me! smiles

    ReplyDelete
  6. We've been doing more with PECS, but I still don't have a board when Claire can make her requests. I need to do that. We've mostly been using it as a 'schedule' for her OT activities, but I know it would be beneficial elsewhere too.

    ReplyDelete

I love your comments and I read each and every single one of them.

Cecostomy Tubes R Us

Here we are - two posts in 30 days! It's scandalous, I tell you!  Seriously though, I bet you all thought that I abandoned ship and woul...