ABSTRACT
The last six chapters of this book have been concerned with how you can adjust the environment you provide for the people with PMLD with whom you work in order to make it more responsive. With the exception of the last chapter, I have concentrated almost exclusively on how this can be done through interaction. Of course, as Watson et at. (1982) and Glenn and O'Brien (1994) have suggested, for some people ICT may provide a bridge to satisfying social interaction by enabling them to develop contingency-awareness, and by helping others to see that they enjoy getting responses to what they do. It may also have an important role in widening opportunities for people with PMLD to experience a responsive environment, but I believe that social interaction is of primary importance. Therefore, in this concluding chapter I return to the fundamental issue of how you can create and maintain an environment in which people with PMLD have increased opportunities to get responses to their actions, give responses to the actions of others and take the lead in interaction. The rationale for this approach is that by providing such opportunities, you will encourage interactions in which both partners participate more or less equally, even though it may well be that you, as the more competent partner, will be taking the lion's share of the responsibility for making this happen. I think interactions of this sort are valuable because they facilitate communicative, social and cognitive development, enhance self-esteem and contribute to making your own role satisfying and enjoyable.
