Where the Dynvox Can’t Go

Even at 11 years old,  Adrian still requires some assistance in the bathroom.  For obvious reasons, we don’t want him to bring the Dynavox V into the bathroom with him.  And clearly we can’t see his ‘help’ sign through the closed door. Communicating his need for help while in the bathroom is one of those areas we hadn’t figured out a good solution for…until now.

We’ve installed a wireless doorbell in our main bathroom.  The button just sticks on the wall with double sided tape.  The receiver that makes the sound is powered by batteries and even comes with a handy belt clip.  We can take it or put it where ever we need to so we can hear it.

I thought we’d have to teach Adrian to use it.  It only took one explaination and he quickly understood.  Now he no longer needs to wander the house half naked to show us the help sign or engage in other less desirable behavior (like flushing the toilet non-stop or slamming the bathroom door repeatedly) in order to communicate his message.  One push of a button and help arrives

More Surprises

After another brief episode of malfunction, Adrian’s back to surprising us with his Dynavox V.

The other day he made creative use of some programmed vocabulary.  Adrian was ready for dinner (when isn’t he?) but we were waiting on Dad to bring the pizza home.  I explained over and over that the food was coming and he needed to wait.  He wasn’t satisfied with my answer and went into the page with phrases intended for the use of the microwave.  He asked, “How much time?”  He asked over and over.  I finally set the timer so he could see the time counting down.  He seemed happy with that and waited patiently for the pizza to arrive.

Then tonight he was trying to get my attention.  He surprised me by going into his keyboard screen and typing the word ‘mom’.  He’s never called me using my name before.  It was pretty cool!