Circles of communication / PLAY project

We have a child psychologist that comes over once a month to observe Andy and give me suggestions on how to interact with him. He has told me about circles of communication. This is when Andy is doing something and I get his attention and then he interacts with me. He will then react to me, often by doing the same action again. Usually, one of our circles of communication is when Andy starts making noises by tapping his hand or fist on his mouth and then he looks at me. I then make the noises by tapping  my hand over my mouth and then when I stop he repeats this again. It's like I'm imitating him and then he repeats the action. He really enjoys this and we now will carry on this behavior for 10 to 15 minutes. At first, the circles of communication would only happen once or twice. Over time, Andy is seeking out more interaction with me, and is wanting to do it more often. We are interacting with each other every day for longer periods of time each day. This will ultimately help Andy to start learning. 

He first has to be comfortable interacting with me and regulating himself, so that he feels OK with his body and in his space. Once our interactions can be stretched out into longer periods of time, we might be more successful in helping him to start learning things. His needs have to be met first on much lower developmental levels before he can begin to learn academic things. These small steps are slowly building into larger interactions, and progress can be seen with him wanting to interact with us more often.