Consistency=Progress

I can hardly believe how much progress Brycen has already made with the consistent 1:1 speech therapy! We had our 4th appt today (5th if you count the initial evaluation where they observed and attempted to test him)...and he already is doing two things that are part of his 5 goals they have implemented.
First off, most children/adults with autistic disorder require pictures to communicate. Brycen is familiar with pictures as we have been inconsistently using them for over a year now. The first step for children is to recognize the pictures and associate the pic with an activity or a task. The next step is the child pointing at the picture of activity they want to do or the picture of their next task. This is the step where Brycen has been with us (and assuming with school as they have yet to tell us differently). The next step in communication with pictures is that he hands that desired/task picture to the staff/parent to let them know what he wants or what is next. HE DID THIS TODAY! One of his goals is to choose an activity from two picture choices...and he actually picked up the picture and put it in the SLP's hand with a prompt, but prompts are always where the learning starts!
Secondly, we are all aware that Brycen's attention span is very minimal. It can be awesome sometimes with various enjoyable activities, but even that is never consistent. What he might do one day for 10 minutes is not what he wants to do the next day, and will only do it for a minute. So, the SLP has implemented a goal for attention span that they will split his session into 5 different activities and he will need to stay on task for the entire 5 minutes with that activity with the help of a timer. On Friday, they informed me that he actually seemed to understand what the timer was meaning even though they had only been using it for 3 sessions. Today, the SLP said they did not need to use the timer at all! He stayed on task for the 5 minutes with no problem! Isn't that absolutely amazing?!
Now our job as the parents is to use the tools they are implementing with him and include that in his daily life for consistency. We haven't been the most consistent in the past, mostly because it's disappointing when he doesn't catch onto something and your patience runs thin at some point after repeating yourself a hundred times in one sitting! But when I see the progress already made with the consistency they are giving him just in 1/2 hour sessions...it will make it so much easier to continue this progress at home as we have seen what he can do with the right tools and the right people!