Date: Thur, 26 Sept 2002 1:46:56
From: heatherslp1@connect.com
Subject: Idea
To: marydavis@standrews.org

Mary,

Keri and Gina confirmed our fears today. They said that Kyle bit a little boy named Brad at recess. I don’t know if they have tried to contact you or not, but I just wanted to share because it goes along with what we talked about over the phone yesterday. They said that Kyle bit Brad because he (Kyle) wanted to play with the ball that Brad was playing with. Kyle was signing “want ball” to Brad, but Brad had no idea what he was doing (after all, they are in first grade and I don’t think this child really knows Kyle that well). From what Gina said, Brad told her that he was “just sitting there” and Kyle did “something funny with his hands” and then after about a minute, Kyle started vocalizing and then he bit him on the arm. According to Keri and Gina, Kyle didn’t really hurt Brad, but Brad is now afraid of Kyle.

I have a plan to help this. I thought about going into Kyle’s classroom for about 20 minutes a day and about 3 times a week to teach the kids some signs that Kyle uses. I know these aggressive behaviors are caused by Kyle’s inability to communicate with the rest of the children, because he has never attempted to bite Keri, Gina, or myself. I have a feeling it is because we can all understand his signs (Schopler, 1995). This makes the fifth time since school started in Aug. that Kyle has got aggressive with the other kids and if you'll sit and think about it, three of them were because they didn't understand his signing. I have the time to go in and teach them the signs, and Keri and Gina said that they thought it was a good idea.

Also, I thought that I would give you a midday update on Kyle’s behavior and performance today in therapy. Kyle and I mostly worked on signing today. We also worked on speech sounds /b/ and /m/. He is doing great with both /b/ and /m/. I think he enjoys practicing his speech sounds better than working on vocabulary or signing! His signing is a little sloppy, so you and his autism staff may want to work on this at home more often. Oh, one more thing about the idea I had. I think that him being included in teaching his classmates to sign will help to polish some of the signs that he already knows (he really needs it!) and it will be a good opportunity for him to feel like part of his class. I thought that as much as we pull him out for therapy, he probably needs to feel more like part of his class. If you have time today, just reply back with your thoughts so that I can work out a plan with Gina and Keri for next week. If you can’t reply until later, just let me know by tomorrow so that I can plan over the weekend. TIA:)

Heather:)

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