Organization: Peirce Software
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Newsgroups: bit.listserv.autism
Date:         Tue, 21 Jul 1992 18:24:52 PST
Reply-To:     Michael Peirce <peirce%outpost.SF-Bay.org@harvunxw>
              <AUTISM@SJUVM.BITNET>
From:         Michael Peirce <peirce%outpost.SF-Bay.org@HARVUNXW.BITNET>
Subject:      Re: FC Skeptics

David's been facilitating for the last four or five months.  The change
in this little boy has been dramatic.

A little background.  David, my stepson, is seven years old.  He doesn't
speak, though my wife tells me he had about 20-30 words before he
lost them.  He attends McKinnon school in the Santa Clara County School
District, an all Special Ed school with a number of autistic classes.

We saw the 20/20 report on FC and were intrigued, but also rather
skeptical.  His teacher informed us that there was a seminar on FC
up in Alameda put on by the Adriana Foundation.  She and another teacher
were going and she wondered if we wanted to attend too.

We went and, though excited by the possiblity of making contact with
David, still were quite skeptical.

When we got home my wife Kathleen tried simple colors with David.
He identified them perfectly.  He quickly moved on to simple words,
lots of yes/no type things.  We focused on food items first, since
he is very interested in food.  He was good typing "juice" vs
"milk" and "candy" vs "twists".

The school people did the same thing.  The teacher started with him,
then the speech therapist got involved.

David has made steady progress since then.  He's mostly using full
sentences with me and expressing rather complex thoughts.  For example
when asked why he was smacking his lips (he had just lost a tooth)
he replied "I like to smack my lips because it feels good".  When
ask if he knew that school would be out this week he replied, "I know
that school will be over tuesday"

This is from a little boy who had no good way to communicate with
us just six months ago (he would take us by the hand and point our
hand at food he wanted, pushing away items he didn't want).

David is facilitating with a variety of people.  He does do better
with some people over others.  I insist that he use full sentences
with me and he does this.  With Kathleen he often will use just single
words.  He is also using FC at school and working well with the teacher,
aides, and speech therapist.

The people at school are as excited about this as we are.  We often
get a call from the speech therapist sharing the progress that was
made that day.  One day, she said that David was mad with me because
"Michael did not rock me".  You see David likes to spin in the office
chair and that morning I was very busy and didn't have the time to
spin him.

We are bridging the six week break this August by hiring one of the
class room aides who has been facilitating with David.  She is spending
a few hours each day with David at his day care (a wonderful special
needs day care that includes a number of other autistic children)
continuing some of his classroom activities.  Hopefully this will
minimize his summer regression (he lost a lot of ground last summer
- though primarily because he spent the summer months at his father's
in a very different environment from the one he has with us).

David switches between two keyboards without any trouble.  We have
a number of paper keyboards printed up and located around the house
and even a small version that has been laminated that we keep in Kathleen's
purse for use on the road.  We also use a Apple PowerBook 100 that
has a simple HyperCard stack that lets us keep a transcript of his
typing.  He often adjusts the screen so that he can see it.  I don't
think he has a preference for using the paper keyboard or the PowerBook.

David doesn't mind being touched, though there are times when he doesn't
want any contact.  He's actually gotten better at this lately and
often climbs up on our laps and cuddles.

His eye contact has also improved a lot lately.  He would rarely make
eye contact a year ago and now does so fairly often.  He loves to look
at me using a mirror.  I will be talking to him and notice that when
I glance at him in the mirror I see him staring back.

David still has many of his "behaviors", but the frequency seems to
have gone down.

Well, this seems to have gotten very long.  I'd like to hear about
the experiences of other parents and people working with FC.  I could
talk about David's progress with FC for hours and hours - and often
do!  But I'll leave it at this today.

--  Michael Peirce      --   peirce@outpost.SF-Bay.org
--  Peirce Software     --   Suite 301, 719 Hibiscus Place
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