I had a bit of an epiphany the other day. Usually i am stressing about how tied down i am. Finally i started looking at it from another angle and i realized its Maggie that needs more freedom from me.
Maggie had the opportunity to socialize with some cool older folks who are accomplished AAC* users. It was great. Maggie was a little intimated but that was appropriate. She was younger than all of them and didn't know them very well. But there will be more opportunities and she will get more comfortable.
I know Maggie can hold her own communication wise when she's comfortable in a situation. I just received this picture from her classroom via text. It's a compound sentence she made on her dynavox. That is incredibly difficult to do and she does it with abandon.
If you can't read it, it says:
Miss Laura, I am excited because it will be spring break and Josephine is coming to see me today. (FYI - Miss Laura is a para in the classroom and both of those statements are correct.)
Maggie just needs the social confidence that she will gain by going on outings withOUT me. Maggie needs more freedom and a "voice" of her own.Hence Maggie now has her own Facebook page (Maggie McDonald). We have to start somewhere and this way so that she can communicate directly with folks. I will be her translator for a while but eventually she will get it on her own.
I may be in trouble when she figures out how to pay me back for all the pictures of her that I have posted. In fact, we ALL may be in a little bit of trouble.
*AAC is assistive and augmentative communication. Maggie's dynavox is an AAC device
Awesome idea about the Facebook account.
ReplyDeleteI don't know you guys personally but love the blog and love Maggie just from what I read. I work with children with disabilities so I I love learning from family blogs.
If Maggie would like to talk to me let me know and I can give oyu my facebook
That's awesome that she's going to be on facebook. I haven't talked to many people with AACs, but I find the default voice (Pleasant Pete? is that what it's called?) almost impossible to understand. That her Dynavox has a readable screen is very cool. There is a woman who was a frequent visitor at my great-uncle's apartment complex, who used a talker without a screen, and I had to resort to a lot of yes/no to decipher her communications.
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