At one point he started repeating every word they said, but with a consistent sound shift. It's "play based," but they were unwilling to play in the ways he likes to play (his attempts to complicate things were denied, his attempts to play with the adult rather than in parrallel were turned asside) He was trying to seek out "safe" places, and hid between my knees a lot while staring at a toy, he wanted to read books, but there weren't any... I'm a bit shy of his quirks making him identifiable here if I give too many examples. I've given a lot of details already
By 'subjecting,' I guess I was referring to the bullying tactics. Repeating the same word louder and louder and with more and more unpleasant exageration until he gave in and just said it. Getting in his personal space (the typical thing where you see the adult chasing the kid around the room, with the kid always backing off the same distance each time. He tried to put a table between himself and the assessor, but she wouldn't let him get into the chair by himself, and he freaked a little when she grabbed him, and got back up when he saw she was going to crouch next to him rather than sitting where he told her to... Ok, it's not like he really gets to tell everyone where to sit, but he did not want her that close.) He was "off" all day afterwards, and did some extremely uncharacteristic things.
And they want us to stop using any sentance longer than three words. And they want us to stop encouraging please/thank you and not use adjectives and start encouraging "mine," amongst other words which we feel are inappropriate for cultural reasons. Also the programme begins earlier than his normal waking time, so it would be a big schedule change, and probably result in his sleeping even less at night (we haven't been able to get him to sleep earlier, so he'd prob. just move night-sleep to daytime nap time -- he only sleeps 7-9 hrs at night as it is).
I, personally, was very put off by many things about the experiece appart from what I've written, including the SLP's excessive and demanding eye contact with me (yeah, I'm a bit aspergery, but this was pretty intense, I realized when I was collecting our stuff that not only did I move each chair I sat in back by a meter or so, but I changed chairs closer to the door twice). That all information which we were provided with before hte appt turned out to be incorrect -- so we went into a completely different assment than was described, 4 mos earlier than planned, etc. That they did not even look at his mouth or ears (SLPs are supposed to check for physical speech impediments, too).
I was told "Understanding means when you tell him to get his shoes, does he?" as a correction because I had been describing him initiating activities based on what was being said around and to him.
I think, above all, that the underlying assumptions are culturally inappropriate to my family.
He does get very frustrated trying to communicate, but that's largely because he regularly tries to communicate paragraph-long ideas. Like which method of propulsion he'd like to use for which method of transportation he's like to take to get to which location where he can find out the answer to what question. When he finally gets it across, he grinns, says "Yeah!" and is on to the next topic
If he's "supposed" to have 50 words, I can darned well see why he'd rather point to pictures in the picture dictionary.
Sorry. Thanks for the space to talk it out...
-Mich
