TeresaTT
Full Member
That's such a shame that all the PECS stuff got lost in the fire. You can always start off just by using photos of things that your son wants which is what they do here and I do with my son. I have some photos of food items on my kitchen door and if my son wants a banana he will pick that picture and bring it to us. PECS can be done without any of their expensive resources.
It's such a shame about Makaton. I've done lots of training in Makaton and I'm now a licensed Makaton Local Tutor. I'm delivering my first course to next week and I'm trying not to panick. I recommend you watch Something Special on CeeBeebies as that is Makaton that is being taught and it is a lovely programme for the children. You can buy a variety of resources from the Makaton web site The Makaton Charity - Home page. The beginners course consists of four half day modules. It is normally done as two separate courses, part 1 and part 2. After that there is two days of follow up training. However, the first day of training will teach you a lot of signs and you can learn many others from all the resources. The speech and language therapists should be able to help you with how to teach your son. I know that many of my friends' autistic children are very good at copying so pick up signs fairly quickly. They keep coming home from school with new signs that their parents don't know.
The problem you have is the school would also have to do Makaton so that they could communicate with your son.
The secondary school just takes all children on from day one and take on extra staff to cope with the extra challenging behaviour from the children. There has been quite a good transition process and the children have already spent some time at the new school. However, as you will know, when an autistic child is expecting to go to school first thing in the morning their whole world will be turned upside down when they go somewhere different.
It's such a shame about Makaton. I've done lots of training in Makaton and I'm now a licensed Makaton Local Tutor. I'm delivering my first course to next week and I'm trying not to panick. I recommend you watch Something Special on CeeBeebies as that is Makaton that is being taught and it is a lovely programme for the children. You can buy a variety of resources from the Makaton web site The Makaton Charity - Home page. The beginners course consists of four half day modules. It is normally done as two separate courses, part 1 and part 2. After that there is two days of follow up training. However, the first day of training will teach you a lot of signs and you can learn many others from all the resources. The speech and language therapists should be able to help you with how to teach your son. I know that many of my friends' autistic children are very good at copying so pick up signs fairly quickly. They keep coming home from school with new signs that their parents don't know.
The problem you have is the school would also have to do Makaton so that they could communicate with your son.
The secondary school just takes all children on from day one and take on extra staff to cope with the extra challenging behaviour from the children. There has been quite a good transition process and the children have already spent some time at the new school. However, as you will know, when an autistic child is expecting to go to school first thing in the morning their whole world will be turned upside down when they go somewhere different.
