Mafe Maria: Personal stories by autism parent mentor, Maria Stultz

Spontaneous Gorgeous Symbolic Gestures

Watching this was so exciting!… Even to Heidi, who at the time didn’t know much about the gestures goal… It’s been just two weeks of very subtle “work” giving Joaquin’s brain little pieces to figure out symbolic gestures, and today he spontaneously gestures “move the couch down”, then creates another gesture reproducing with his hands what Heidi had done with a piece of paper, and immediately realizes how similar that gesture is to “book” and performs it. That is so complex!

He didn’t see Heidi model any of those gestures; it came all out of him, and it was so much richer than simply imitating gestures (something he’s been doing 2-3 times every time we’ve played this week). This tells me that his brain is laying out the web of connections that is making this skill emerge naturally and perfectly. It’s happening, and I feel like out of a chapter of “Kids Beyond Limits”.

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