Nathan’s dynavox mount has been broken, so we had to go to school today to fix it. Ms. Ronna came with me to help, as we have the mount on loan from her. It took her a few minutes to do it, and afterwards we had just a few more minutes to work with Nathan on the device.
In a time span of about 5 minutes, he gave us 3 messages. The first thing he said was, “I play guns”. That is his favorite activity to do with Ronna every week. What’s amazing is that he had to navigate through a page with about 40 buttons to compose that message. As soon as he said it, he looked at her and smiled, excited to play guns with her.
Then he started looking at the food on the counter and smiling at me. I asked him if he wanted food and he smiled and said, “Yeah” with his voice. So I asked if he wanted a cookie, and asked him to tell me with his device. Once again he blew me away. He went straight to the food page and went straight to the cookie.
I must say that this is only the 2nd time that Nathan’s been on this user file. For those that know Dynavox, he’s now on Gateway 40 and is just starting to work with it. So I was AMAZED that he could navigate his way around, find the cookie, and select it amongst a field of 40.
After I gave him a few bites of a cookie, it was time to go home so Ronna asked him to say Bye to Mrs. Belinda. The “bye” button was at the very bottom right of the page. He kept looking at it but when it came time to making a selection, he was struggling with the dwell. However, he kept trying and trying and trying, and after his 7 or 8th attempt, he was able to say “Bye!” to Mrs. Belinda.
I was awestruck to see how well he worked with this new setup, how quickly he navigated, how accurate he was with his selections. He was SOOO intentional! It was absolutely amazing to see him showing off, and using the device intentionally and functionally.
So what do cookies, guns and bye have in common? A smart, gorgeous, happy little boy eager to communicate with the world around him! Oh and the most exciting part? We had witnesses! His teacher and aide saw this, so now they can actually believe us when we tell them how amazing he is!
I get goosebumps EVERY TIME you share what Nathan says on his Dynavox. Too many times we think that kids with different abilities don’t comprehend or know what they want because they can’t get the words out with their mouth. It’s so amazing to hear what he is thinking!! I love it! You are the PERFECT mother for him.