Thought that you'd love another peek into Molly's therapy life. She started Neuro Rhythm Music therapy about a month ago, where it combines both ABA therapy with music therapy. An awesome therapeutic approach for my girl for sure. They work on listening to verbal instructions and following orders. They work on sequencing patterns, which is also hard for Molly...but fun when you get to play an instrument. We have added two life skills goals to each session as well. One is STILL working on crossing the street safely and the therapist Sarah made up a song that we sing. Soon the song will be faded to just in Molly's own head every time she comes to a busy intersection. Today's blog post, however, is about "Stranger Danger" and what most of you have done with your elementary aged children. We are still working on it all these years later. Molly has never met a stranger and would hop into the car with whomever pulled up and said "Do you want a ride?". That's why she is never out of sight of support and never goes anywhere alone.
First we needed to start with pictures of family members and folks that she knows. To pair with the pictures was a green sheet of paper with the word "Good" on it. That's all we worked on the first day. Jack, Mom, Dad, Nick, Jake, Katie, Luke and Emme (all her cousins). It was a little disheartening that Sarah would show a picture of our family of 4 together and Molly would hesitantly point to the "Bad" sign. Eek...is it my cooking? Brooke's breath? Jack's constant need to snuggle you? Something that I don't know about? Luckily Sarah didn't call Social Services on us and knew that Molly was just confused about the words and what was expected. Fairly quickly she was labeling all the family photos as "good". Whew. I got such a chuckle as every time the picture of her cousin Nick would be shown, she would say (with her mouth) "Carson" who is one of Jack's friends. And darned if those boys don't truly look alike in that picture!
Then Sarah pulled up all these random pictures of people off the internet and showed them to Molly. They had a red sheet of paper that said "Bad" on it placed beside the computer. "Stranger" is such a vague, hard word and we were trying to break this down into the most simple category. Eventually the Red paper will say "Stranger" and the green will say "Friend".
Of course all the cute young girls and attractive boys, Molly was labeling as "Good". And we'd have to say "No, you don't know them, they are bad". GOSH, this was NOT easy for me; I was raised in the South where you're supposed to be nice to everyone. But this was the only way we could teach this skill to Molly who likes everyone too and has no discernment for the murderer and sex offender. ;)
Then Sarah randomly switched the photos between family and stranger and Molly was nailing them 100%. Sarah wrote a song about saying "Hi" to a stranger if they approach you but then you turn and walk away. When we practice, Molly leans in to the computer face, says "Hi" and then very non chalantly turns and walks away. She added these words "Go away" (clear as a bell) out of her mouth as she is turning. Kind of rude but made us laugh too.We practiced singing the song for about a week until it was time to take these skills live....out into the hallway of a fairly quiet medical building.
The sign you see at the beginning of the post is what I held as I tried to lure folks off the elevator to engage. What we quickly realized is that everyone is SO nice and trying to help that they would say too much. One lady said "Hi, do you want any candy?" (classic, right?) Molly adamantly nodded her head and said "Yesh". Sarah said "No Molly, this is a stranger, someone you don't know. You can't take candy from her". Molly responded "Yesh, Yesh, YESH!!" while nodding adamantly. She REALLY wanted that candy :) The mom then mouthed to me "Sorry". I was laughing and said "Thanks for trying. Now we have something else to work on".
Back to the drawing board. You just never know what issues might come up and being flexible with these learners is not easy.
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