Stimulating Communication in Children with Autism

By Anna Luca, founder of The-Special-Life.com

Looking for ideas on helping an autistic child communicate? This article may help. I’m the parent of a child with Aspergers Syndrome and he experienced speech development delay. My other child has cerebral palsy, and is unable to speak. Similar to what is being reported by some of the kids with autism, he has lots to say, but can’t get the words out – at least not well enough that everyone can understand him.

There’s a good chance that if you’re dealing with an autistic child that has trouble communicating, you’ll be able to benefit from some of the alternative communication methods we’ve used. Here are some ideas for you to think about.

Picture communication is a great technique. You can use symbols, images or personal photos on cards or even stickers as a way of communicating. This is how we started at home. We created custom images and photos of his favourite foods and drinks on laminated cards and attached them with Velcro to a large Bristol board on the side of the fridge, placed at his height for convenience. When he was hungry or thirsty, he’d go and examine the board, take the card of what he wanted, and bring it to us.

He’s also a big fan of videos. So we created custom cards with images of the covers of his favourite shows and created another communication board placed at his height next to the TV in the living room. This was actually a huge benefit to us, as until then he’d just cry and scream, pointing to the TV and we had no clue what he wanted. After the PCS cards were set up, the tantrums stopped.

In the hallway near the kitchen, we created a board with picture symbols of different facial expressions, with the printed word of different feelings. This was a very useful experiment, as it gave him a way of expressing his feelings when it would be next to impossible to guess what his thoughts were. For instance, he’d bring us a “scared” card to let us know that he was afraid of the dark in his room. How else would we ever have guessed that? And how important is it to a child to have a parent appease their fears?

Another time he grabbed the “quiet” card and brought it to me, making sure that I knew that was what he wanted. Puzzled, I then watched as he took the card and poked his noisy little brother with it!

He was smiling all the while, mind you, but it was great to see that he had figured out a way of telling us both that he wanted his brother’s behaviour to change.

On the occasion that we had a caregiver in charge that wasn’t as familiar with our son’s routine, he was also able to use the communication cards to help the caregiver understand what he needed.

In the daycare and schools, they used a similar setup with picture communication symbols. They found it most useful to help create a map of the daily activities, and help train kids in the steps of individual routines, such as getting dressed, washing hands, bathroom routines and so on.

Setting up this type of communication system can take a fair bit of time though, and I realized that not everyone has that luxury. So, I started a small business offering to create custom communication cards and boards for them. As autistic kids often respond much better to photos of actual items they know, this can be a real benefit in promoting communication, with minimal effort for families and caregivers.

That project in turn led to the creation of a website offering other tips and tools for families with special needs, The-Special-Life.com.

Later on I found Prompt communication cards and stickers that are pre-printed and ready to use. This of course is a huge time saver, especially for the daycare and school environment. There are even sets available to help communicate and learn life skills and routines such as shopping or going out to the restaurant.

The next step up in alternative communication is to provide an actual voice that will do the speaking on their behalf. For this, we’ve found the Go Talk to be the best solution. This augmentative communication device also uses picture communication symbols or images (standard or custom) to communicate. But it has several very important advantages – access, portability, sound and durability.

With the Go Talk line of communication devices, there are a number of symbols available for display at any one time, but there are also additional layers of symbols also available at the touch of a button. The Go Talk 20, for instance, has 5 standard buttons that can be programmed, as well as 20 variable buttons that are available on 5 different levels. That means that at any point in time, he can have 105 communication symbols available to him wherever he goes. And, each button allows you to record a voice message for each level.

With the Go Talk, for the first time he was able to participate in a classroom. He could raise his hand and answer the teacher’s questions just like everybody else, just by pressing on the right button to speak for him.

It also allowed him to take part in drama class since he learned to listen for his cue and ‘speak’ his lines when ready. He loved it. And of course, he can use the Go Talk to tell us about his day, or tell his classmates what he did on the weekend.

I realized that this type of small low-tech and affordable device wasn’t readily available, and often people didn’t even know it existed. So, in addition to talking about it in my existing website, I created an online store to make it easy to find and purchase all sorts of useful equipment.

Using the right communication device can help autistic kids get their words out.

For more information or to purchase a Go Talk or other communication device, picture communication cards and stickers, and other products for autism, visit my online store at:

http://www.special-need-products.com/autism-store.

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