It's Not a Toy

Here is the deal with Little Man's Ipad (I want to call it his Italk!). He had an assistive technology evaluation this week to see if there was anything available that could help do his talking.  At first, they were unsure that a 2 year old could actually figure out how to use the Proloquo app on the Ipad to communicate. Little Man blew us away with his evaluation. I have always believed he is extremely smart, and even I was surprised at some of the tasks he was able to complete. They started by showing him a page with 4 pictures of objects and asked him to point to certain ones. Then they moved to 8 pictures on a page. He was able to get all of them! Eventually they showed him a page with 40 pictures and asked for more abstract ideas. The first one they asked on this page was for him to point at the picture of the girl sleeping. After a minute of looking at them, he pointed right to the picture! I was shocked. We really don't talk a lot about sleeping. We say "night-night". He just kept on amazing us with the rest of the evaluation. After the evaluation was over, it was decided that he would be a perfect candidate for using the Ipad to help him communicate. There is a group that is going to provide the Ipad, the app (Proloquo2go, which is about $200) and an otter box to protect the Ipad from the 2 year old. What a HUGE blessing! It can take 2 months for the entire process before we actually get his Ipad, so they sent us home with a loaner. Unfortunately we are not able to make any changes to the Ipad or lock any of the apps until we get our own. We were encouraged to not let Little Man play with any of the other apps. He needs to understand this is not a toy. He needs to use it to communicate. When he understands, we can add apps for "playtime" and then lock him out of them when we need to. It took him less than an hour to figure out how to get out of the Proloquo and into a lot of fun games! So much for this not being a toy!

Last night we were able to help Little Man tell us with his Italk :) that he wanted pizza and he wanted to watch Mickey Mouse! Yea Little Man!! Today we have been playing little games with him to help him practice with the Italk. We pulled out some of the Little People animals to match the words with the toy. He wasn't interested at all. He wanted to get out of Proloquo and find a game. This is going to be a challenge!

If you ever have a minute, you should check out the Proloquo2go videos on youtube. It is amazing how children that can not speak a word can catch on to the app so quickly and begin communicating with the world! We are so excited to see where this can take Little Man!

This first video explains the app...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vomkNSluWW4

This video shows a toddler a lot like Little Man using the app to ask for cheese and crackers. Without the app, we normally take Little Man to the pantry and either have him show us what he wants or we offer options. If we can't figure out what he is asking for, he melts down.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tp2ROyyyqjo


If we can teach Little Man that this is not a toy we will be on our way to helping him find his voice!