[blindkid] how do you teach a child to say yes?

Bonnie Lucas lucas.bonnie at gmail.com
Sun Jul 31 00:36:12 UTC 2011


Wow that is such a cool example of having high expectations and helping a
child to make something important happen. Thank you so much for sharing!
Bonnie Lucas
-----Original Message-----
From: Alison Stephens [mailto:amspencer at yahoo.com] 
Sent: Saturday, July 30, 2011 5:48 AM
To: blindkid at nfbnet.org
Subject: Re: [blindkid] how do you teach a child to say yes?

This sounds familiar.  A few months ago my son was not able to say yes
either.  He also would repeat the question if he wanted it, or rephrase it
appropriately as an answer, but could not say yes.

So, his TVI invented a ball game that jumpstarted the process of learning
this, which he can now do with no trouble.  She sat with legs outstretched
with Nate sitting in front of her, also facing forward and I sat opposite
about 4 feet away.  She helped Nate hold the ball on the floor in front of
him while she asked "Mommy, would you like the ball?"  then I would respond,
"Yes, please,"  then she would assist Nate in rolling the ball to me across
the floor.  Once I had the ball, it was my turn to ask, "Nate, would you
like the ball?"  The TVI would then suggest to Nate that he say "yes,
please."  He didn't say it initially, so she would say it for him, and then
I would immediately roll the ball.  We did this back and forth for about 45
minutes (was it that long?) and by the end of play he started catching on to
asking the "would you like the ball" and saying "yes, please,"  since play
would not proceed without the question or answer.  I suppose that it helped
that he liked the rolling ball game.

We played this game a few more times over a few weeks, and we also focused
on saying "yes, please" at other times during the day, and he got it.  The
game really seemed to get him started with it, though.

Hope that helps,
Alison






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