*****Moondog*********

[Jimjams2]

Whilst dealing with the hell that is dinner time in this house I came up with the perfect business for you (honestly I should make a career in thinking up businesses I keep winning blumming business competitions- now need to put one of them into practice).

I am not being completely altruistic I would need your services.

Do you want to know more????

would be interested actually in whether you think (given the range of sounds he makes) that speech is a possibility or not. Growing Minds are assessing that anyway- I suspect they'll say to go for it- but you'll hear its all vowels, no consonants- well not many.

That's lovely,really lovely.

Fantastic interaction-really meaningful and fun.

I'd be thrilled to bits to get that sort of response.

He's gorgeous too.

As regards speech,he really seems to be trying to articulate and the intonation is pretty good.

Generally people seem to feel that if it hasn't developed by 7 then there is not much chance of it doing so but I am not so sure,especially in cases like this.

(Nothing wrong with your kitchen btw!)

well you're being polite about the kitchen

This was where the growing minds course was really good- we had to examine a belief we held about our child- mine being that ds1 will never speak (theage 7 stuff- heard that too). that's where all the executive function stuff came in- their view was that for children with poor executive function in particular speech can come later (as they executive function continues to improve throough late childhood and adolescence). They have worked with someone who started talking at 13, and in facrt I know of someone who took their 8 year old non-verbal boy to them and they got him talking in a week (not sure he had ds1's articulation problems though). My friend did go out for a beer with someone who didn't talk until he was 13. These are the rare cases of course. I am interested to see what GM say- I suspect they'll say sign anyway- now he can imitate. He can imitate "bah" reasonably reliably (although it switches to "die") but I'm not sure how to move on!

He is very interactive a lot of the time, and yet have very severe problems and so many things are impossible for him. It's a funny thing autism. When I watch that sort of video I can understand why aged 2 he was missed, despite being severely autistic.

I can certainly see that the Autism was missed.
It isn't the sort of thing that comes to mind immediately at all.

The stuff I am reading now on functional comm. training for people with SIB has ample evidence of people being taught speech even in adulthood but it is pretty rigid stuff with perhaps only one purpose in mind (eg asking for help in stressful situation)

As a student of ABA I can see its uses but as a SALT I question the point of speech with such a narrow function.

It's a tough one.I often say to parents 'Would you rather that your child learnt a narrow repertoire of speech with a rigid function (or words to that effect) or would you rather that he is an effective communicator as he can possibly be within his range of needs?'

And yet,God I know that people would give anything to hear their children speak and I feel their loss and pain deeply.

ABA seems to focus on fluency rather than understanding (rejecting as it does 'mentalistic' notions such as memory,and I suspect,executive function).

It is the complete opposite to how a salt is trained as we hold great store by mentalisitc concepts (eg storing language, retrieving it and so on)so I am tussling with the whole thing,but I like it.

Always good to have one's assumptions held up to scrutiny.

I am beginning to think that a lot of SALT is bollocks tbh,especially in field of Autism and challenging behaviour.

(As for the kitchen...it looks no different to anyone elses! You should see my sister's. I have a panic attack every time I go in.It defies description and the entire fridge is a health hazard.)

Oh that's funny your first line. When we went for dx we were told he couldn't be autistic because he did "x, y and z". Then after dx we were told (by the SALT- the one I've moaned about on here a lot) that he couldn't possibly be doing x, y and z because he was autistic. I came across the papers by Dickerson et al- conversation analysis and autism- and it was like a breath of fresh air. They described autism as I knew it, they basically observe and describe and come up with a very realistic picture of non-verbal autism (even using conversation analysis ) so that's what my disseration is on. My supervisor is keen to go for further funding as well for next year. I know I mentioned it briefly before but if you know anyone with a child at the same end of the spectrum as ds1 who would be willing to provide video (program work fine, naturally occuring interactions even better, whether by PECS, sign, gesture or speech) I'd love to include them in the project. It's all very positive looks at what children do rather than what they can't.

Yes- that's the thing with speech isn't it. I'm keen that ds1 can communicate his wishes- the get the eebie jeebeis when I think of him as an adult unable to express his own wishes- so destined to a lifetime of SS deciding what he wants. Right down to other people deciding when and what he will eat. I don't care how he does that sort of communication- as long as its understood easily. I would love for him to develop speech of the sort that would allow us access to his thoughts. His understanding is very good now can say things like "no that's the wrong one get that one over there" and he can follow that (and if I use a vague gesture accompanying "over there" he can make sense of it). It would be lovely if his level of expression could in some way match that. Reading more into executive function it seems cruel that in fact its not lack of language letting him down, it's an inability to control his body in real time. Must be so frustrating. Very fast DTT's are meant to really help improve executive function- so you demand answers quickly, and thus teach the child to respond quickly. Will see how it all goes when we get the program back up and running properly in January.

The lack of speech issue is like one room in a house that is always locked isn't it?
You so want to find the key and get in because you know there is so much interesting stuff in there.

I well recall your discussions on PG study.
Is this for a Psych. or Linguistics MSc?
I'd love to read it when you've finished.

It's a little hard for me to access suitable individuals at present as I am not back at work yet,but will bear it in mind for when I return in the spring.

Yes,I find the whole fluency thing really interesting.For our course we have to learn approx. 8 x 40 cards a term with key issues and terminology on them.We then have to keep data of our learning trends on Standard Celeration Charts.

The purpose is three fold;

developing fluency (not too bothered about understanding at this stage)

understand how taking data is a pretty hard thing to do in terms of self discipline

hopefully providing further impetus for our own learning as we track improvements/deterioration of performance.

Psych- will hopefully transfer to research fellowship next year- depending on funding (the difficult bit!) of course. Of course if we did get speech then all the other problems would become very apparent