PECS Testimonials

Stories from Parents and teachers

Ms. Frost

I wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed the workshop yesterday in Plainview.
It's the second time I've heard you speak and each time I come away in awe of how easily you are able to talk about your subject, give valuable tips, use personal anecdotes to teach. All while managing your audience. The time flew by. I could have stayed longer.
Thanks so much for making the day well worth my drive from the East End!
Hope your journey to N.J. was speedy.
Respectfully,
Ellen Lutz
(pink sweater, first row on your right)

Andy & Lori,

Wanted to share a quick story about our son Eric, who is 8 ½ and has autism. We spent 3 months trying to teach Eric to sign and about 2 months on a picture-point system. We took the PECS 2-day workshop around the time Eric was 3. He started at the Sussex Consortium when he was 3 years 2 months. We are fanatics about PECS. It was so wonderful knowing what he wanted. We have made PECS for his 80 Disney videos and his 50 books in the Disney library. In retrospect I think it was part of a subconscious agenda we had to get to 30 exchanges a day. When he gets to 30 a day we get to phase 4. When we get to phase 4 he may talk. At 5 ½ we finally got to 30 exchanges per day and added an "I Want" card followed by a few colors.

After a few months we sort of accepted that he did not talk. Last Monday we got a note from Eric's teacher asking if we could come in and observe new things he has all of a sudden learned to do well. We proudly made the trip over to his school wondering what we would see. We were totally shocked to see/hear Eric talking. During the 20-minute visit he made 5 or 6 exchanges with the sentence strip and read it off totally independently. It still does not seam real. If I had not seen it with my own eyes and heard it with my own ears, I would not believe that at 8 years 5 months someone could talk for the first time.

Thanks for all you do for children with autism. I have seen so many children have great success with PECS over the past few years.

John & San Willey

Dear Andy,

I attended your workshop last Friday in San Francisco (I'm the school psychologist/behavior therapist sitting on your right side of the room).

At the end of the day, when I completed the evaluation I felt that I had enjoyed the day, brushed up on some lesser used skills and terminology, and learned some important new things. But now, as the week goes by and I am again immersed in work, I realize that what you taught me on Friday is already making a profound difference in how I understand and design instruction.

For example, I've been examining the instructional strategies my therapists use with the students (pivotal response training, Natural language paradigm, various discrete trial programs) and trying to figure out what parts of VB are we looking at/expecting, etc. And it comes clear that if we give a child the toy every time he comments on it (e.g. NLP or PRT), we are never getting a pure tact, or that truly "spontaneous commenting".

I have also been using Krantz and McClannahan's work on picture cues and activity schedules, and your ideas on limiting and eliminating prompts glues it all together.

I am generally pleased when I can leave a workshop with a few good ideas to try. But this week I am REJUVINATED!!

A hearty thanks.
Michelle

Dear Rhiannon,

Thank you for making the PECS training this weekend in Ashe County so interesting and helpful. I was the mom with three kids with Down syndrome. We have been looking for a way to improve our kids' communication skills, and I think PECS will be an excellent tool for all three of them. My husband, 11-year-old son, and I started our training tonight with my six-year-old son, Benjamin. In ten minutes he had easily mastered Phases 1 and 2 and was chasing us and his communication book all over the house with his picture in hand, smiling the whole time. It was wonderful! On to Phase 3 tomorrow. As a stay-at-home mom, I really like that PECS is easy to implement and focuses on functional skills, rather than just checking things off some list. As a licensed clinical psychologist, I like that it is behaviorally based and utilizes positive reinforcement. I've taught many of my patients to try to catch their kids being good, so I loved hearing that! It is very powerful.

Your enthusiasm and knowledge of the topic made the training both productive and fun! Thanks for working with Kendra to make the training possible, and for putting so much energy into making it a positive experience for all of us!

God bless,
Anne Margaret Wright, Psy.D.

Kris, Battaglinni

Thanks for doing it. Our parents are definitely better off, which will make a difference for our kids. You were right, it seems like it was a great couple of days. We had some awesome feedback from a couple of parents regarding the parent training. A couple of the things have been making me laugh all day and I have to share!!

1. Dr. Battaglini was wonderful, like Super Nanny only better!!
2. He made it seem very simple, but it is a very different way of looking at things.
3. He was tough, with a touch of gentle!!!

Susie Berry sberry@cape.k12.de.us