Words Aren't All They're Cracked Up To Be

Special. Spectrum. Severity. When the subject is "autism," a lot of words take on different meanings.

Indeed, communication has become a whole other game for Jim and me over the years with Charlie. He's taught us both to slow down the fast talking and to be better listeners and, too, to learn to listen to communication that doesn't always involve words. And when Charlie does talk, single words tend to take on meanings far beyond what are expected. "No," for instance, sometimes seems to mean something more like "no I don't want to do that right now let me think about it for a few minutes and maybe I'll do it then, capiche?"

(Often, "no" said by Charlie does means no.")

Of all the things that I write about regarding autism, communication is one I've returned to often (indeed, it's a topic that Dora and I both seem to refer to regularly). Teaching Charlie to talk has been a big focus of his education. Charlie's been doing speech therapy since he was two years old. He can say the sounds of all the vowels and consonants though not always clearly. This year, though, he hasn't been doing as much speech therapy or, rather, he hasn't been wanting to do as much: I'm suspecting that sitting at a desk and working on his articulation has started to get a lit-tle tedious after ten years, and gone are the days when the therapist did things like blowing bubbles or winding up wind-up tours to capture Charlie's interest.

While he's got plenty of learning challenges and delays, Charlie's very much a 12-year-old boy, with That Swagger to his step and devoted to his iPod.

This increasing sense of independence has been showing itself in other ways besides objecting to repeat "/l/ words" with the speech therapist. Charlie's lately been showing an aversion to doing any grocery shopping (and Jim has been recalling that the last place he wanted to be at age 12 was buying food and detergent with female relatives). Charlie has made it very clear about where he wants to go and what he'd like to have for dinner (hint: sushi is no longer on the list).

Amid some tough times, Charlie has been---intermittently, inconsistently---talking in some new ways on his own, from telling us "I got the boat today" at the swimming pool last Saturday, to an unprompted "hi" while at the kitchen sink to a "thank you" to a waitress who'd brought him a Sprite.

Charlie first learned to communicate using sign language (and here's a recent post at Child-Psych.org about children on the spectrum using it). This was over the objections of our then-ABA consultant who argued that learning sign language first meant he'd "never" learn how to talk. Well surprise surprise: The sign language taught him to communicate. While I do think Charlie has always wanted to communicate, he first had to be taught how to do so in ways that other could more readily pick up on. As a friend recently posted about her son, who has Angelman Syndrome, he had to learn that "he could communicate" and also "what communication was all about." Charlie, too, had to be taught such "communication basics."

I purposefully wrote "communication basics" rather than "speech and language basics." What's most important is that Charlie can communicate, whether by talking; once by signing. As I noted yesterday, an augmentative communication device may one day prove very useful for him, by expanding the possibility of what he can communicate.

So that's why I put up an action to promote the use of augmentative communication devices. We shouldn't prioritize speech and talking as "the only" ways to communicate. The technology is out there to give those for whom speaking is not so easy, is not available, a means of expressing themselves. And it behooves those of us who can speak to learn that it is indeed possible to say a very lot by other means than words, and to make sure that people know this.

So take action!