By Linda Hagood
Background
Rylan is a teenager who has light perception only, autism, and significant challenges in the area of cognition and expressive language. His greatest interests and motivations are in people, swimming, music, and dogs. Some of his biggest problem areas are in the areas of:
- Emotional development/ Self regulation. He sometimes become angry, aggressive and uses bad language when he is expecting a specific activity and it does not occur, especially when the person he expects is not available.
- Social interaction–tends to be passive, doesn’t often initiate action or communication, most interactions are limited to one or two turns.
- Expressive communication–limited mostly to requesting, rejecting/ protesting, using mostly single words, sometimes echoes adult speech to maintain an interaction. Topics for communication are also very limited–mostly related to people.
Goals:
- Increase active participation in activities to 10 verbal or nonverbal turns in each of 5 new social activities.
- Transition from solitary to interactive activities without protest
- Initiate by adding words or actions to begin an activity or to shift focus of a social activity
Editor’s Note: Unfortunately captions, audio description and transcript are unavailable for these two videos.
Story: Red and Rylan Have a Baby Puppy
Reflections on Instruction: Rylan Dog Story
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