Sylas has had a very hard time learning the word "stop". Last year, I printed out a stop sign and laminated it, then velcroed it to the exit doors in our house. Then I took another one and glued it to a popsicle stick and carried it with me everywhere to teach him when he needed to stop. I started both techniques in the home doing little drills with rewards and lots of praise. It took us awhile for him to learn what the sign meant, but he finally got it! After much practice, I was able to teach him the sign for wait as well, and what it means. He will now wait for up to 30 seconds if I count the numbers as he waits, and even longer on a good day.
To take things further, I made a bunch of tiny laminated stop signs, like the size of a silver dollar. I keep them in a baggie in the car and take them into the community with us. I have 2 different kinds... some have nothing on the backs of them, and I'll put them by the condiments on the table at a restaurant. I found that some things weren't flat and I didn't want to be taping things to public places, so I stapled a hair tie to the middle to some of them. Now I can either loop the stop signs around something or use them to tie the sign to something. Since Sylas has learned what the word, the symbol and the sign for "stop" is, he now knows what he can't touch when in public. We also have things like the chemical cabinet labeled with it, as well as our marker/paste cabinet, file cabinets, etc.
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