We just had our second visit to our new Clinical Psychologist in Birtinya, Queensland. Dr Johann Eloff was introduced to us by Winnie Lau, our Clinical Psychologist who first diagnosed Lauren with Dr Tony Attwood way back in 2007. Lauren is now 12 years old, and fast becoming a teenager. Pimples on the forehead (thanks to my family genes:-)) and wearing trainer bras.
We met Dr Johann for the first time on the 4th of November. Lovely person and very pleasant demeanour. Lauren found him quite handsome and told us she used her high pitched "ha ha ha" laugh. Whatever that means!
We had agreed that we wanted Dr Johann to guide us and the school SEU (Special Education Unit) team and align our efforts in helping Lauren improve her social skills. Learn how to make friends, learn how to keep friends. Learn appropriate friendship behaviours.
Short of sounding like a school teacher, I am going to list down my to-do list, then I can also use this blog as my checklist. Like?
1. 3-things to talk about Being a typical Aspie, Lauren can talk quite endlessly about a topic of her choice, for now it is GLEE and every single thing about GLEE, and bore her audience to ?**%$#!.
So, when Dr Johann met her this week, he gave her two minutes to talk about what she wanted to talk about. When the two minutes was almost up, Lauren got very nervous and said she simply could not finish everything she wanted to talk about on GLEE. And Dr Johann assured her it was alright because she could tell him more next time and it was his turn to talk anyway.
To help Lauren keep to a 2-minute guide, Dr Johann has asked us to use a 3-point guide. Ie. when we talk to Lauren, we specify three things we want to tell her. When we have completed the 3 things, we ask her what she would like to talk about as a signal for her to start sharing, but keep it to three things. Hopefully this becomes a habit and in due time it becomes an internal clock to signal that it is her friend's turn to talk.
We'll let you know how this goes.
2. Getting to know friends All this while, Lauren has said she has friends, but she hasn't a clue what they like, where they stay, what movies they love. Simply because she has never thought of asking. Our second project is to have her get to know 5 friends over the course of one week asking them about their hobbies, fav books, movies, songs. To make it less daunting, we told Lauren that this is something she could do to help Colleen Koh-koh, who is visiting during the Dec/Jan school hols, know her friends. Especially since Koh koh comes during the holidays and will not get to meet any of her friends in person. She started yesterday and interviewed her first friend, Brooke.
3. And in the meantime, I need to call Autism Queensland to check if they have the Model Me videos. These videos can be used one on one to teach kids with Autism social skills.
More on this next time.
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