Do You See What I see?

Frances Dolan
Aug 26, 2017 · 5 min read

Parenting a child with additional needs is anxiety inducing at times. Not because of worry, stress or fear. That’s all part of our expectations having kids. It’s the volume of information to understand & translate into meaningful strategies for Iggy that can overwhelm me in a state of panic. As a parent I don’t have the privilege of professional boundaries like I do in my work life. We have to live these strategies. Every minute, everyday. Work out how to do it all, stay sane and love life in the process. As parents, additional needs or not, we are the specialist in understanding our children.

Imitation is a developmental skill that affects everything. At first it seemed a simple enough concept. But the more I learn & read, the more complex understanding the nuts & bolts of social interaction development becomes.

Early on we were provided disparate knowledge, that focused on Iggy’s vision condition with little consideration for his developmental progress. So how do you make sense of these chaotic pieces of information? I found Early Start Denver Model gave me a systemic approach to developmental assessment and intervention. ESDM works by teaching behaviours that enable natural social learning & engagement through cooperative activities. Imitation is a crucial component of this social learning infrastructure. Understanding and recognising that someone is imitating you, is linked to development of higher level social-cognitive skills.

There is a big overlap between development of early skills for receptive / expressive communication, imitation & joint attention. Less mature skills ie. eye contact, looking at a toy or face, move on to build more mature skills ie. object /actions /facial imitation, social reciprocity, joint attention and language. It’s a really important piece of the puzzle. We learn every early skill through an element of imitation. Imitation and joint attention are essential early learning skills.

We are lucky to have had help early on from therapists that connected with Iggy and I, they were engaging and supportive. Imitation was an essential component to learning to chew food, make sounds, climb & walk. All these higher level skills were taking so long to master due to global developmental delay and the foundations for social learning including, joint attention & imitation were only still emerging. Skills would seem to appear then disappear or plateau. When we started doing Early Start Denver Model I realised this gap in Iggy’s development. It started to make sense why he was delayed & how to fill in those developmental gaps.

So to get to work on imitation!! I thought it would never happen. Iggy wasn’t quickly seeing the relevance of imitating another person with objects or actions. In addition to his ESDM sessions music, video modelling & ABA were needed to pin point this skill for Iggy. We needed to find a way for him to understand exactly what it was he needed to learn. By developing a love for music we were then able to build in imitation goals using favourite song and game routines within his fast paced ESDM play sessions. This coupled with the ‘sparking imitation’ Gemiini video modelling, some discrete trials which were faded out when imitation started generalising, were needed for him to learn motor imitation. Our weekly family Kinder Jam group at Novotone Studios has been a great help in generalising imitation. Group times at Ripples Early Learning Centre and song & game routines at home have played a massive part too. What happens at home & in child care holds a lot of power, relationships are important for emotional & social learning and this packs a lot of punch!!

I mentioned above Gemiini discrete video modelling. Gemiini is so powerful for a number of reasons. Firstly it is accessible and pairs a non-social activity with social motor learning. Quickly helping children to learn to tune in to peoples mouths to learn sounds by using close ups of faces and mouths producing sounds and words. Also by using a verbal behaviour approach providing repetition & multiple examples of communication targets through pictures and signing. Video modelling is able to be used easily & frequently at home, as a family you can work on generalising the actions and sounds your child learns. The link is below if you are interested in looking at it further.

There is an element of dyspraxia (understanding, planning and performing motor actions) in Iggy’s blockages, this impacts his oral skills too. As a baby he was a slow feeder & would suck his food rather than chew it. Imitation of sounds & words is challenging for him. Apraxia of speech and Autism can be co-morbid so it’s important to monitor children with either diagnosis to ensure access to appropriate services. The difficultly with knowing if Apraxia of speech is present is that the child has to be talking before you can assess. The jury is also out on if children with Autism have true motor issues with speech production or they are struggling with the ability to monitor their own speech (speech attunement framework).

There has been a huge amount of research the last 5 years in early intervention for Autism. It is a rapidly evolving area of clinical practice. As with many of the interventions used with children with Autism, often practitioners find they are effective in helping ALL children to best learn. So it’s important to keep up with new research.

Happy singing & playing!

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/aur.1462/epdf

https://www.facebook.com/novotonemusictuition/

)

Frances Dolan

Written by

ESDM certified therapist & Occupational Therapist - Newcastle Australia. Life with my neurodiverse crew through a new lens.

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade