In this testimonial, Rachel Ricci and her family share their experience of one year of using the in-home, educational autism robot QTrobot, with their son Caden. Through Rachel’s family’s experiences, we dive into how an in-home robot helps parents support their children on the autism spectrum gain new life skills.
“We’ve had QTrobot for more than one year, and it’s just been wonderful. The robot sessions are now a part of our family’s routine. Typically, we do half an hour a day after school. Sometimes Caden doesn’t want to go to school or therapy, but he loves the robot. He knows that it’s part of his routine and looks forward to the sessions with his robot friend. He even tells me sometimes that it’s time for the robot session.”
When school got shut down or teachers went online with Zoom, all of this proved to be ineffective for the majority of our special needs students. Kids stopped communicating the way they used to communicate. There were a lot more behaviors because they were home, they were out of routine. Also, kids were a lot more stressed and acting out in certain ways.
Having QTrobot during the pandemic was very important. If anything, we were able to focus more on our educational goals alongside the robot. Because we had the support of QTrobot for the whole entire pandemic, I’m really happy to see that Caden didn’t have a regression in skills. We’re fortunate enough to have gone through this pandemic unscathed with Caden. If anything, we were able to focus more on our educational goals alongside the robot.
“We were fortunate to have an in-home autism robot during the pandemic. Because we had the support of QTrobot for the whole entire pandemic, I’m really happy to see that Caden didn’t have a regression in skills.”
Review of a year with an in-home robot, helping children with autism
Focusing on Developing Robust Foundation and Addressing Skill Gaps
Because QTrobot touches down on details, I realized that there were lots of small cracks in Caden’s foundational skills. QTrobot helps children learn step-by-step and the robot’s educational programe builds up, from easy to more advanced.
In the beginning, I thought I could jump to more difficult units of the educational curriculum, thinking that my son was more advanced. But we learned that it’s so important for children on the spectrum, to always have that strong foundation. So, we decided to start with the foundation, from the first units in the curriculum and moved up. Only then I realized how much Caden was actually missing in the foundation.
Becoming an Extension of His Teacher, Providing Full At-home Support
I think having a robot tutor at home has been awesome. Caden has learned so much more than what he learns at school. Our school system is fast-paced, and at the special needs school Caden goes to, not all kids in his class are at the same level.
QTrobot is like a full support for Caden’s education. It’s like the extension of his teacher. With QTrobot Caden’s speech and attention have improved. Now, he is more inclined to sit and participate and is in general more motivated to learn. He’s also getting more aware, and he’s happy, happier than before.
Building Transferable Skills:
“I was positively surprised by all the functional material QTrobot is teaching him. I love the social skills and functional programs in the curriculum. QTrobot has helped with social skills topics such as personal space and boundaries, how to be nice and have manners, give time and space while people are talking and much more.
Especially the community helpers curriculum has been very helpful and they are Caden’s favourite activities. He understands what people’s rules are and now he is becoming more of a community member himself.
QTrobot community helpers curriculum has helped Caden become more of a community member himself. They are also Caden’s favourite activities.
For example, Caden has learnt about the restaurant and what you are there for. The situation will be that the family’s in a restaurant, and QTrobot asks to tell three things about the family and the restaurant. It forces him to push himself. Now he knows that when we’re going to a restaurant, it’s not just about getting a pizza and going home. Now he knows, we’re in a restaurant, and we’re happy to be there. He knows that the person that’s going to come to our table is a waiter. He knows that the person in the back is going to be the chef who’s going to make us a pizza. It’s like a whole global way of learning. Whereas before when we would go pick up a pizza, that was it. Now because of QTrobot, Caden understands the process of getting a pizza.”
“After practicing the social skills and community helpers with QTrobot, now Caden is becoming more of a community member himself.”
Impact on parents:
QTrobot is a great support for parents. I never had as much involvement in any other therapies. I would pretty much drop off and pick up my son for his ABA or speech therapy, and only after the session, I would hear that Caden did wonderful and we’ll get some homework via email. That was it. With QTrobot we’re totally engaged in the learning. All of a sudden, we get to find out where our son needs a little bit more help. We can watch him do the activities with QTrobot and we are all aware of what exactly he know and we can watch his progress directly.
“QTrobot puts parents in the driver seat. We get to see the progress in real time.”
Last but not least, I want to thank the caring team of special education professionals, who are behind the QTrobot. The team at LuxAI has been caring about us, looking at Caden’s results, giving me feedback and helping me to use the right activities in the program the whole time.
