Liam slapped his hands on the platform at the playground. Marisa put her hands on it and made polishing moves; he did the same. She patted it; he did the same. "I wish I could think of something else I could do here," she said.I tapped my thumb on the platform, because he does that sometimes; he imitated it!
Then Marisa slapped the bars; he did the same.
She grabbed them and shook them (like a monster grabbing the bars to his cage); he did the same. Repeatedly.
This changes everything. Now we can teach him things by modeling them, at least sometimes.
Marisa would point out that he's already done some of this. Liam often plays with his toys "inappropriately," his teachers say, meaning not that he's being sued for harassment (!) but that he is using the toy in a simpler way than it's intended. (The reason this matters is that he already knows how to enjoy shaking something or banging it, but he needs to know cause and effect, and how to be the cause himself.)For example, he sometimes licks the wires in the toy on the right rather than moving the blocks along them. But last week Grandma modeled correct play, and later on Marisa noticed him doing it himself.
He's grabbing the cords on the baby swing to hold himself steady.
And this morning at breakfast he signed "more!" when Marisa asked verbally, without her modeling the sign.
"He's going to be OK," I said to her this afternoon. Of such things hope is made.