Shhh...Not Now Ray

I have to share what Raymond did at school this morning, Mr. Personality. His school had all three emergency drills today, which the entire school participated in: first the earthquake, then the lock down, and lastly the fire drill.  During the lock down drill, Raymond’s teacher closed all the curtains and turned off the lights in the classroom.  The whole class was sitting in the dark, Raymond was in the corner with his nurse and they were all instructed to keep quiet.  That lasted only for a little while when Raymond started saying with his talker….”Hi...Hi...Hi!”  His nurse Kaylee was trying to tell him to…shhh, when Raymond then said with his talker…“I want”…”Sit with friends please.”  Kaylee said it was hard not to laugh, but she whispered something like….we can’t right now Raymond.  That is our little social boy!!!  So proud of how he is using his talker. We have prayed for so many years for him to be able to communicate with us.   

I bet you are wondering why we don’t have more videos of Raymond using his talker.  I know that much of Raymond’s progress on his communication device (Tobii) has been just us reporting.  It is really not that easy for us to capture video. Let me explain.  Raymond will start talking and we get excited and jump into a conversation with him or let him do what he is asking for, but once we grab the phone to record, he starts focusing on the phone and smiling and forgets about the talker. I finally captured a really good video of him communicating one of his “needs” last night.  I was so excited and really tried not to over “cue” him, my Speech and Language Pathologists (SLP) friends out there will know what I mean by that.  And he displayed 100% accuracy….again, our SLP friends will know what I mean.  I am very excited to finally present a video of Raymond’s amazing progress on his talker.  We are so proud of him and the progress he continues to make.  The Lord has answered so many prayers. 

Hebrews 10:23 “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful;”

http://youtu.be/WzeouxaE_Qw