TasKids sent in the schedule for this month April 2018 with Arron covers Mon, Wed, Fri from 5:30 – 7:45; and Jody covers Tues & Thur. from 5:30 – 7:45 as well. Jody also handles Parent Training on Mondays and Fridays (mostly to make up for the weeks that we did not have PC sessions).
At the daycare, Alexandra (I have not met her yet) covers Tues, Wed and Fri from 3-5 PM; and Jody covers only Thursday (3:15 – 5:15).
So now there are 4 staffs from TasKids in William’s case.
Supervisor: Anh Huy Nguyen.
Behavorial Technician: Jody, Arron & ALexandra.
Huy, is a young man, he’s with TasKids for 3 years but he’s been in the field for 6 years. He’s a very organized man. He put the schedule for home sessions in front of the binder so that we can easily know who will come on which day. He thinks ABEST had too many goals for William so he reduced that to a few. BT will still set 15 minutes for potty; and William has to sit for 1 minute. BT will show William the timer on their phone set to 1 minute. Then after that William needs to wash his hands.
Arron was supposed to start 2 weeks earlier but he was sick. He’s a very young man; I think there’s something wrong with his legs that he does’t walk normal. He always comes to our house with only the notebook in his hands: no toys at all. Other staffs always come with toys to use as re-enforcer but he doesn’t. I think that’s the reason why William keeps asking “I want Mama” and runs to the kitchen during his sessions because William is bored.
Jody, we first met her when she was with ABEST; she brought sand/sand tray, puzzles and other toys. William always loves sand so it’s naturally that he keeps asking for sand in her sessions. She uses it as the re-enforcer to ask him to solve the puzzle and read books. She brought 25 pieces puzzle which she knows is hard for William to solve; “The purpose is for William to ask for help, not to solve the puzzle.” – Jody explains.
Alexandra, covers at the day care only, called in sick the 2nd day (last week); and then this week. But then TasKids texted me saying that she felt much better so she could come this week! I have not met her but I heard from daycare staffs that Alexandra is more involved with William than Jody. She will also covers the morning sessions when William is at the day care full day.
I feel like TasKids don’t have enough staffs that they send us those are not in good health, besides Jody & Huy (I have no idea what sickness they have. ).
Communications with TasKids has been text messages; looks like it’s the method they prefer because I only got 1 phone call from Tailyn at the beginning, then after that they’re all text messages whenever there’s a schedule or staff change; which is fine with me.
TasKids did not even ask me to sign any paper works at all, which surprised me because with ABEST we had to at least sign the Client Services Agreement which lists all the things that we, as a client, should or should not do.
Another thing, ABEST policy does not allow BT to contact directly with us; TasKids on the other hand allows that, I got text messages from Jody and Alexandra when they wanted to cancel the sessions.
It’s not good or bad, it’s just my experiences with 2 different companies, and I just wanted to write it down.
Friday morning, we had appointment to see the Neurologist Thanh Le in Newport Beach. Its location is hard to find so I ended up park in the business center near by and walk to his office. The building is so beautiful with water fountains and green landscape. His office is on the 2nd floor, William enjoyed riding the elevator as usual but he he cried and kicked when we approached the office door; once we got inside he refused to get off the stroller.
He said William met all the criteria of autistic. The most important thing is William didn’t look at him when he walked into the room (no eyes contact). Dr. said normal children would just look at the him and use eyes to observe. Normal children would point to this or that when they like some thing, but William would just take my hands and lead me to the things that he likes. Dr. Thanh explained that autistic children would not understand body language. If we say the same sentence in 3 different voices: normal, angry or happy. Normal children would understand that but autistic children only understand the words (if they can), not the differences in the way we say. He used Blind and Deaf person for examples a lot. He said we don’t yell at Deaf people because we know they can’t hear us. Autistic Spectrum Disorder, why they call it Spectrum? Because spectrum is a range. 1 end is Autism, in the middle is normal people and the other end is Politician. A Politician can talk about 1 small for 2 hours, while Autistic person doesn’t want to talk at all.
