Billy Ray's Visuals
I learned a great deal about how complex children receive information from reading various authors and videoes for the program Social Stories(TM) by Carol Gray. I highly recommend buying or borrowing this program. Her presentation is very helpful. Her website is www.thegraycenter.org.
and the program is also available through Future Horizons. I also highly recommend all of the books by Temple Grandin, PhD whose website is www.templegrandin.com. Dr. Grandin's books are also available on Future Horizons at the above link as well as Amazon and other popular sites.
After I understood more about ways communicate information, I began making a variety of visuals for Billy Ray. I had been using the software to make symbols as suggested by the Autism Specialist. I grew frustrated by the lack of needed symbols. A friend loaned me her digital camera and I began making symbols for activities for which I could find no symbols in the software. Billy Ray responded immediately to picture symbols instead of the stick figures. I began making all of his symbols with digital pictures.
Excited with the success in creating symbols that he responded to, I began creating visuals for him regarding upcoming events and daily tasks. I called them Billy Ray’s Stories. Some of them merely tell a story that he enjoys hearing such as the story of his adoption . Others answer questions he may not be able to verbalize about what he needs to do and what to expect. The Going to the Clinic or the original Going to the Doctor visuals are example of that
I use the same concept to create schedules or step by step activity visuals because Billy Ray needs to have things done in the same sequence each time or he is confused.
An additional benefit to this adapting traditional approaches to meet Billy Ray’s needs was that the they became evidence to show educational and medical professionals the type of things he could do. The first one I did was the Feeding the Horse Visual (to view just click, Feeding Horse Visual) . In my excitement to show the communication visuals I was trying at home I took the visual to school. Many school related professionals were surprised he was able to handle this type of activity. Pictures don’t lie. Comments were made about how independent he appeared. Two members of the IEP team made an appointment to come to our farm to observe this activity.
