AAC Device for Aaron…We’re halfway there!

About 6 months ago a friend of mine became the speech pathologist at Aaron’s school.  Prior to the start of the school year she and I went to a conference for an organization here in my state that lends iPads and a few other devices out to people and schools loaded with all the AAC apps that are available to people with communication needs. They let you keep them for a few weeks so you can play around with them before you go spend hundreds (sometimes thousands) of dollars on something. That way you don’t have to do it sight unseen.  The conference was great, I learned a lot and saw a lot of different devices and apps I never knew about.

I also saw the DynaVox which I have blogged and talked about before.  I knew about it from the Kreed’s World blog.  Kreed is 17 and communicates with a DynaVox and does it really well! I think the one we saw is the one Kreed has and it seems the right size for someone his age. I liked it when I saw it in person however it is big and Aaron is still pretty young…I think he would drop it a lot…and it is super expensive.

About a month ago my friend/Aaron’s speech therapist (and Roo’s too) got on loan, an iPad from this organization loaded with a bunch of AAC apps. We ended up using Proloquo2go. She set it up for Aaron to use in his class for a couple weeks and although I didn't get to see it in action he apparently used it quite a bit and it went really well!! We do a photo collage for the kids every year so they can show photos of their family to their classmates. I have to caption Aaron's photos because he is non-verbal but this year he got to sit with the therapist in front of the class and tell them with his device who each member of his family is. That must have been so great...that is one thing I wish I had seen.

I got to take the iPad home for about 4 days and I didn't get a lot of opportunity to play with it, but from what I did see I liked it. I also like the face that all the people at the school liked it and especially that Aaron liked it and was receptive to using it.

So, everyone was bummed when we had to send the iPad back. Aaron has his own iPad but it has all his own stuff on it and he would never be able to use it as his AAC device. He needs a separate iPad to use as a dedicated AAC device.

Enter the business trip my husband and I just went on.

Every year my husband and I go for 3 days to a conference/market for our business. Long story short, there are hundreds of vendors there wanting us to sell their products in our store so to get us to their booth location in one of the largest convention centers in the USA they lure us over there with drawings for prizes.

One of these booths (which we actually went to because we were buying something anyway) was giving away an iPad mini. Well lo and behold, of all of the things we entered to win at this market we won that iPad mini!

Actually, Aaron won the iPad mini! Before we even arrived we had talked about what we would do if we won another iPad (we won an iPad the year before too...it's my husband's iPad now) and we said we would make it Aaron's dedicated AAC device. So now we have the device, we just need the app which is a lot of money but supposedly the school district will pay for a communication device for Aaron but I don’t know if that’s while he’s in preschool or if he has to wait until next year when he's in the big kid school.  Maybe they’ll go “halfsies” with us on the app…haha.  He’s on a waiting list for state assistance that will pay for a device but I don’t know how long that will take.  It could take years.

He has been really out of sorts since we got back from our trip. Very moody and upset, stimming a lot, chewing on everything, hitting/kicking, etc. I can’t imagine how valuable it would be to have a communication device right now that Aaron was already adept at using so he could tell us what’s wrong. I haven’t the foggiest idea to be honest and it’s very frustrating.

But…we’re halfway there…how awesome is that!? If we have to fork over our own money for the whole app we will, we just want for Aaron to be able to communicate but some help from the school would be nice and it would certainly speed this process along. We shall see....

I really want to write a letter to the company that gave us this iPad and tell them what a gift they have given us. They have accelerated our child’s potential ability to communicate by a huge amount of time and that is worth everything. And it was all literally luck of the draw….