Our daughter, Gabriella, was diagnosed with PDD-NOS when she was just 3 years old.  We suspected something was wrong from the time she was just 9 months old.  She would have multiple meltdowns daily as well large periods of time where she would just slip into her own noisy, little world and we would be unable to communicate with her. We knew that we would have our hands full equipping Ella for life.

We looked for support tools to help us manage life with a special needs child.  The first of which was Choiceworks; a picture based learning and life management tool.  From the moment we took it out of the box we knew she would benefit from it.

The first two years we used the Choiceworks board with picture tiles.  This was revolutionary for helping us in training Ella.  We simply put up the tiles of what she needed to do three times a day.  We worked with her on accomplishing those tasks.  The companion books helped manage emotions and meltdowns.

The Choiceworks App is an essential learning tool for helping children complete daily routines (morning, day, & night), understand & control their feelings and improve their waiting skills (taking turns and not interrupting). Created with the support of leading hospitals and child development specialists, this app is designed for caregivers to provide clear and consistent support to foster a child’s independence, positive behavior, and emotional regulation at home and in the community.

Then in early 2012, the Founder and Creator of BeeVisual contacted me and asked me if I would like to review their new Choiceworks App for Itouch.  This new App resolved several problems we had encountered over the previous years.  Although while using the Beevisual Choiceworks Board, Tiles and Companion Books while in the home, it was impossible to carry the whole system when we were out.  While using the downloaded App on my Itouch, we were able to pull up her boards, and books and help her refocus wherever we were at the time.  We were also able to upload more personalized pictures of tasks and situations unique to our family and environment.

The Features Include:

■ Three boards: Schedule, Waiting, and Feelings

■ Three Companion Books supporting each board

■ Image Library preloaded with over 180 images and audio

■ Add your own images and record your own audio for limitless customizability

■ Easily create profiles to personalize and manage multiple users

■ Save an unlimited number of boards for multiple children or different routines

■ Speaks boards out loud with professionally recorded audio

■ Time saving essentials like search and auto-save

■ Share boards by Email or iTunes File Sharing with other Choiceworks app users

■ Ability to print boards or save as PDF

Choiceworks has been an invaluable tool not only for our special needs daughter, but we use it to keep our younger son on task as well.  It is easy to use and customizable.  I can take it with us wherever we go on the Itouch or Ipad.  Saving different tasks for different days, or uploading photos for your own unique schedule make this an invaluable tool for families with special needs children.