finding boxes of stimuli.....

I"m cleaning out my clothes closet this morning and I run into another old box of stimuli from our ABA home program. I keep running into these. I find file boxes squirreled away. Full of cards, pictures and words sorted into sections labeled....."aquisition", "mastered", "to be introduced".
The pictures are both homemade and store bought. I remember searching the internet for specific pictures about actions. They were really expensive and the anxiety from the expense still hits me when I saw the cards this morning. I can remember arguing with myself over the cost and finally saying....screw it....this is for AUTISM and I hit the "purchase" button in defiance.

In my case, my boys needed more visually based programs and so EVERYTHING had to be in picture format and then paired up with the words. It took a lot of time to cobble everything together.

I remember buying this little electronic laminater that you fed every card through it in a paper sleeve. ONE index card at a time. (I particularly liked how the card came out all warm and toasty on the other side.) Until those geniuses at Xyron came out with the machine you could just crank with your hand. Bless you Xyron but you could have made the cartridges less expensive.

I would sit in our weekly clinic meetings cutting out words and pictures hour after hour.

I've got pictures of food from our kitchen food items. An old PECS book with their old toys we used years ago when we were just getting started.


And I would BET you that if I showed them those pictures again they would immediately ask for those long lost toys.


I don't have the nerve to throw those out yet. I think I'm just satisfied that when I pulled them out this time I didn't fall apart in a puddle of tears. I'm growing more and more comfortable with my efforts. And that is a very good thing.

And writing about it definitely helps. Now the memory just isn't in those little boxes that may or may not survive my next urge to purge. That record of our past life is here on this page. The time when so much of our life was defined by velcro, index cards and laminating cartridges, categories of activities, actions, emotions, objects and sight words.

Course, if you know someone who needs some good stimuli.....let me know. It isn't a lot but every little bit helps.