Modelling Up
Modelling up will help your learner to understand the meaning of buttons, and encourage multi-button presses. Here’s how you do it.
Encouraging Your First Independent Presses
How to encourage your learner to press their sound buttons. Whether you’ve had talking buttons for a while but haven’t had that first independent press yet or want to set yourself up for success, here’s what you need to know.
Choosing Your First Button Words
How to choose the first words you’ll record on your sound buttons, and what makes a great starter word.
Prompting vs. Directing
Everything you need to know about how to interact appropriately with your learner when you’re using the buttons - and how you might accidentally make getting independent presses harder.
Ways of Pressing Buttons
This article discusses different ways learners can interact with buttons. We also cover how to respond to the more unusual ones!
Accidental & Experimental Presses
Responding correctly to accidental and experimental presses is crucial to help your learner progress. Here’s how you respond to them.
Target Practice Q&A
Here we answer some common questions about target practice, and how to get yourself back on track if you’re struggling
Target Practice
If your learner seems to struggle with accuracy or activating the buttons, use target practice to help them press accurately and confidently.
Food Words
Food words get a lot of bad press in the button community. We’re going to discuss their pros and cons here and (spoiler alert!) talk about why you should probably add one.
Is my dog smart enough to use buttons?
One of the most common concerns we hear from people who are interested in trying buttons is that they think their dog or cat isn’t smart enough to learn how to use them. We can just tell you they are, but we know that’s not enough to help you make the decision, so here’s how we want you to think about this.
Puppies, kittens and animals new to your home - when is the right time to introduce buttons?
Reflections on teaching a very young puppy to use communication buttons, as well as having talked to and helped dozens of teachers with new learners in their homes in their first weeks and months of button teaching.
Using hands to make choices
Teach your dog to communicate without buttons by using your hands to offer choices