I added "now", "soon" and "later" to Scout's board on 4/1/21 and have had no luck whatsoever with her having any interest in the words. We've been modeling the words while speaking for months prior to adding them, and modeling them with buttons as well as speaking since we put them on her soundboard. We also tried scented stickers to help her tell the difference between all three.

Those of you who have learned that understand these words, do you have any tips and tricks?

Thank you!!!



Definitely never modeled this one 😂



I'm thinking that either she was saying she had just pooped and now she wants to play tug, or pooping feels like a tug, lol!

Scout has always referred to us doing the dishes as "play, water". this was never modeled, she made it up herself. Lately, I have been modeling "mom, work, hungry" when I cook. 

Scout had been talking about our routine and washing the dishes while we were eating. I started to wash the dishes, but then realized I forgot to model, so I went over to her board and pressed "mom, play, water". Scout immediately went over to the board and pressed work as if to correct me. I agreed, and then pressed "mom, work, water". 

I've mentioned in the past that it was possible Scout sometimes sequences in reverse order, but it was hard to tell if it was true, or if I was just making meaning of something in my head.

Tonight Scout pressed "home" and then went to the front door and whined to go out. I thought she maybe mistakenly pressed "home" so I redirected her back to her buttons. She hit "home" and then waited by the front door to go outside again. I redirected her back to her buttons and she hit "perch, home, potty, outside".

She was asking to go potty outside and then settle (she was starting to use "home" as settle, so we just added a settle button) on her bed ("perch, because we place it on top of her crate on the couch next to us).

What's interesting is that she reversed the order. Has anyone else seen their learner do this?

I thought it might be neat to see and hear about everyone's hobbies and interests outside of the buttons, and if they somehow lead you to participate in this whole AAC process with your pet. (I honestly wouldn't be surprised if many of us had similar hobbies or careers!) 

I'll go first...  

I work in mental health and education with teenagers. My job involves using a strength-based trauma-informed approach, modeling, tracking and changing behaviors, and taking lots of data related to IEP goals. My career definitely has influenced my decision to use the AAC buttons and how I go about the process of teaching Scout to use them.

As far as my hobbies and interests... I love hiking, volunteering (I sit on the Regional Council for my local chapter of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention),  advocating, cooking (vegetarian), antiquing (I just started collecting vintage Pyrex!), board games, arts and crafts, caring for my plant babies (we're growing quite a few tiny succulents right now), watching independent films, spending time with our family at the beach (NJ!), camping, live concerts (I love a good mosh pit!!!), traveling, arts & culture, and going on road trips.  I'm also currently on a fondue kick.

How about you?

I've seen a lot of people ask on here and on social media lately about how to get started if you have a dog that's a digger, superchewer, or aggressive button pusher. I threw together this TikTok to explain how we tackled this with Scout. I hope this helps! 

For the past few months Scout has developed a couple phrases where she presses the buttons almost simultaneously with her nose and paw. The first few times we thought it was accidental, however we very quickly realized through playing back videos that it's intention. 

There are two big possibilities I'm leaning towards with this...
1. She's "speed" talking. She's always strings her multi-button presses together very quickly, and the phrases she does this with have buttons right next to each other.

2. She wants me to better understand her and know that the two buttons form a concept or one of her "compound words".

I'm leaning towards the latter, but either way its very interesting!

Scout is now so obsessed with eating snow that she's been chatting about it lately!

Holy cannoli, I just had a realization. When breaking down and interpreting multi-button presses if you’re feeling stuck try breaking down the meaning based on your learner’s “soundboard compound words” not each individual word!

So  many learners are pairing words together to mean another word they don’t have a button for. So for instance, “hungry, chew, play” could be sequencing, or it could be meant as “hungry + chew + play” = edible chew treat. It’s not so tricky to interpret on it’s own, but when you combine it with other button presses and other “soundboard compound words” it gets a lot more complicated to interpret! 

Through my time chatting with you all I have noticed that several of the learners are using the same combinations to mean the same thing! 

Of course not all learners automatically mean the same thing when they combined buttons, but I thought it would be neat if we had sort of a dictionary or translator going of these “soundboard compound words”  our pets use. This way if we are feeling stuck interpreting we can look here for ideas. 

I’ll start!

Water + outside = pee
Hungry + play = do some training/tricks for treats
Hungry + chew  = edible treat
Hungry + chew play = nylon toy w/edible treat
Outside + home = beyond the dog gate (kitchen and basement for us)
Hungry + water = add a little water to the kibble
Hungry + ball = nylon toy w/frozen oatmeal (Scout’s version of a Kong)
Ball + water = ???? (Maybe also for frozen oatmeal toy since she might be saying ball + cold)