Loss For Words

While I'm at a loss for words at what happened tonight, it seems as if Wade has found his!!!

Wade got sick in the middle of the night last night, so needless to say, he was pretty drained today. (Not to mention we were out and about shopping, eating, etc. for 12 hours yesterday without a nap!) This afternoon, he took a long nap into the evening, so after bath, instead of going right to bed, I wanted to test something on the iPad. I wanted to see if he could spell simple names--mom, dad, Wade--since he knows his alphabet and letter sounds. Typically, he's up for anything on the iPad, but I couldn't coax him to use the proloquo app (communication app). So, we went to his new favorite app, Starfall. On the letter "G", when you press the button, it says "Green means go." I repeated it after the device, and Wade looked at me and selected the sentence again with his head. So, of course it repeated the sentence, and once again, I read the sentence. Then Wade did it, and I did it. Over and over until he got a little chuckle. I could almost see the light bulb go off like he was thinking, "I can say the same thing Mom says!" It was pretty cute.

Since he had his moment of fun, I tried to go back to proloquo. I went to the keyboard and got him to spell W-a. I asked him what letter was next, and I saw him look over at the letter "d" but then he tried to select "b". (a, b, c, d were the four bottom choices on proloquo app keyboard) I tried to redirect him, but he kept going back to "b". I then realized he was shooting for the bottom part of the square which was right above the "home" button. (Most of the time Wade is pretty accurate with his head, but I moved from 6 choices to 8 tonight which made the squares smaller, plus he wasn't feeling well.) I said, "Oh, you want something else?" He looked up at me and again tried to get the home button. I ended up touching it for him, but he took it from there. He then selected the button that says "quick sets" (the area that I've programmed some stuff for him); then selected the button that says "bedtime"; then selected the button that says "bed". (Mind you, there are other choices on the screen that he has to navigate through/choose from.) I was shocked!!!! Up until now, I've gotten us to a particular page of choices we've needed, then he makes a selection. So, he's been paying very close attention to how I get in and out of different areas and where I'm placing certain choices! I said, "You want to go to bed?" He just looked up at me with the most pitiful face. So, off to bed we went without a single cry of resistance. My sweet, tired, sick little boy just navigated the proloquo communication app on his own, switching between multiple screens. What an awesome accomplishment!

***I just realized when I posted this that it is 1:00AM. Just so I can keep things straight, this event happened Sunday evening:-)