Do You Hear Yourself?

*Update!- C.J. now understands the meaning of you, I and we!!  How did we accomplish this?  When I asked C.J., "What are YOU doing?", I took his hand, emphasized him pointing to himself and gave him the correct response.  "I am standing up!"  We practiced this until he was able to give me the correct response without my prompting or hand over hand signals.  Hooray C.J.!!

I have found an interesting discovery in one of my favorite books about autism.  The book is called, "Strange Son" by Portia Iverson and I highly recommend it for anyone who is about to enter the world of autism.  Whether it be thorough life or profession.

In this book, they find that Tito (an amazing poet with autism), cannot see and hear at the same time.  (huh, I'll come back to that) They even found that he was not able to hear his own voice when he spoke. (another huh)

As you can imagine, I have become more keen on observing C.J.'s seeing and hearing senses while teaching.  I have even witnessed him putting his hand directly in front of his mouth while he spoke at times.  Wow.  He has figured out a way to hear his own voice!  When he talks with his hand in front of his mouth, the sound bounces back to him and the vibrations give him awareness of his intonation, pronunciation and speed.  Aha!

So, today we are going to work on hearing his own voice by recording him while he describes a picture in a sentence.  Then playing it back! Oh, we can have fun with this!  Yes, what kind of mother/teacher would I be if I didn't get silly with this one?  Let's just say that by the end of our session, all manners will be out the window!