Hitting social story

Beebsism: Sadie hits. A lot. It's her first reaction to being frustrated, tired, angry. Sometimes she will just hitcha out of the blue for no reason. 
Our Solution: We came up with this social story and token system. I am determined to put this behavior on extinction!!! So we read this social story several times during the day. 

Then we introduce this token system:

These are the choices I laminated and she gets to velcro her choice onto the page.

If she hits she does not get her reward and we delete an app on the iPad. I take a dry erase marker and make an X over an app box and delete the app right in front of her. We haven't really used a negative consiquence in a token system yet, so here's hopin'. Her ABA team totally helped me with this. We agreed that I should start with apps that aren't her favorites and work our way up. She can always earn an app back by "choosing an app" as her reward and since it is in the "iCloud" I don't have to purchase it all over again:) 

BTW: that funny arrow sign on the rewards means "airplay". When you press that on the iPad, the video your watching will automatically show up on your TV (if you have the apple tv box). Sadie gets a big kick out of this, so we incorporated it.

Now thats what I call handwriting without tears!

Sadie has a very hard time with some fine motor skills, such as writing. Her behaviors always spike during writing assignments and we seldom get by without an incident. We have been trying different programs like Handwriting Without Tears with little success. Her writing legibility has improved but her fatigue levels have not. Our neurologist told me that Sadie should be using an iPad in the classroom. Her words were "asking Sadie to write that much is like asking her to run a lap before learning a lesson" And so she wrote a letter to the school recommending "assistive technology".

The school has finally approved Sadie to use an iPad for her writing assignments in the classroom. We had to have a little meeting about it with the "team". At first I felt like the Principle and RSP teacher were fighting against it. I could be wrong but the meeting started off with "an iPad is typically not used at the elementary level..bla bla bla..." I really should give them the benefit of doubt maybe they were just going into formalities but I couldn't wait to find out so I interrupted by saying "We will provide the iPad" That changed the tune of the meeting and we were able to go into exactly when and where we would use it. Some of you hard core special ed law knowing folks would probably call me a push over. The district probably should provide Sadie with "assistive technology" and after a bit of pushing and a million lengthy IEP meetings maybe I could get them to provide that, but the reality is this; that would take so much precious time that we don't have. The district has kind of already forked out a small fortune in services and a one on one aid for my kiddo and hopefully will continue to do so. This was a battle I didn't see any reason to fight. Sadie's grandparents gave us our iPad last year during all the hype about how they help autistic children in hopes that it would benefit Sadie. The iPad has so far been a tremendous tool in her development and using it in school is yet another huge way it can help her. To me it was a no brainer. Sadie's kindergarten teacher is very supportive about trying this out. She is very "Apple Savvy" and is convinced that she needs 23 iPads in her class:) I'm not going to lie this makes me love her even more. During the meeting Sadie was in her wheel chair playing on the iPad. At some point she wanted to show me what she was working on. She had typed "The mall is fun. The mall is a store." "See that" said her teacher. "No tears, no hitting, she did that all on her own. Thats why she needs the iPad!" By the way I totally didn't plan that, she was playing Wheres my water? last I checked.

Toca Tea Party for Autism

I wanted to show you one of our favorite apps in action. Sadie loves her iPad. In quite a few cases our special needs children prefer to play with an electronic over engaging in simple play. This app marries the two together. It took a couple years for Sadie to learn play skills. I felt like I was training a robot. However, after years of hand over hand and mimicking play for her, she got it. Play comes so much easier for her now. I wish this app and the ipad for that matter had been out sooner! If you haven't already, check out Toca Tea Party and all the other wonderful apps from Toca Boca.

app for social stories

So Sadie survived 100 day! Yeah! Her teacher let me know she started to get really upset but they read her the social story again and before they got through it she was all smiles again! Sadie's ABA case manager and I have been scouring iTunes for an app to catalog Sadie's social stories. How nice would it be to be able to have them on the iPad and on my iPhone where ever we go. We finally found an app called notability. This week it's only 99 cents! So this app is awesome for social stories! Here is why:

1. you can type in your social story right on your iPad then add pictures from google or draw your own!
2. If Sadies therapist writes one, she can write it in the app on her iPad, then email it to me. It will be in a notability file so I just open it up and wal la it downloads into my collection of social stories!
3. You can record your self or your child reading the story
4. you can title it and organize it in a table of contents sort of thing.

So the only bummer is that it doesn't transfer to my iPhone. If anyone has found anything better please comment or email me!