Where Brett Started
Brett first started ABA therapy at Cornerstone Autism Center in April 2019. When he first began therapy with us, he scored 15 out of 155 possible milestone points from the VB-MAPP Assessment. Brett is Deaf and uses American Sign Language (ASL) to communicate; however, when he began at Cornerstone communication was challenging for Brett. He would attempt to point but would primarily pull people to general areas of what he wanted. His inability to fully express his wants and needs was highly triggering for Brett. Alongside challenges in communication, Brett also struggled to attend activities for more than a few seconds, making any activity or learning difficult. The team quickly began identifying over his first few months of treatment that Brett was developing his own unique way of communicating, which gave us insight into the amazing way his brain was working to communicate with the world around him! Through access to images and his amazing memory, Brett began demonstrating the ability to map out with his finger the locations of his wants and needs, including a trip to Chick-Fil-A with his family!
How Brett Improved
As time passed, our team continued to fall in love with Brett and the unique way he saw the world around him. Brett’s creativity and huge imagination continued to emerge as he continued to grow during his time with us! During his time here at Cornerstone, Brett developed the ability to ask for the items and activities he wanted using complete 3–5-word sentences in ASL, as well as acquire the skills necessary to have conversations about his favorite things, including maps and numbers with his friends, family, and therapists. During his day at Cornerstone, Brett followed a daily schedule where he worked on programming for 15 minutes and attended social groups with his peers. During his free time, Brett enjoyed making complex designs with origami and building with blocks. We suspect he will be an engineer or work at NASA one day!
PAH! Brett is graduating from Cornerstone with 141 milestones across the VB-MAPP Assessment and has mastered over 5,250 targets! Brett has worked hard on many kinds of programming, including working on targets to teach him more about Deaf culture and his community. These programs included learning how to appropriately get the attention of others, respond to lights flashing to get his attention, and give his name sign when asked to introduce himself to help further connect and create meaningful relationships with his family, friends, and others in his community! We will all miss him so much, but we know he has a bright future ahead of him! Well done, Brett!
