communication in autism

[30somethinmumo3]

Hi! My son is 6 and autistic. He has good language, but do not understand the concept of conversation. Things like taking turns to talk, other people have ideas and contributions when you talk to them and when to stop talking.
I know he is young, but we want some practical ideas to help him to voice his valuable opinions and make his lovely contributions, but allow his siblings and anyone else a chance to get a word in. He talks hours on end on his special topics, trains, dinosaurs, etc.
Any ideas or good books on the topic? Practical advice on how to help him without causing distress or upset?
There's lots on how to help your child to talk, but I can't find anything on helping him to understand communication.
Thank you

Hi.

The turn taking which we take for granted in conversation and which appears to be happening so naturally for us, is actually a vital precursor to language development, which is usually developed at about three months of age. It is part of a process of language development, which begins at birth when baby first starts making eye - contact and paying attention to faces. - These are vital early developmental stages for language development, because what do faces do? - They communicate!

This 'facial regard' which baby develops is usually then moved forward by the parents who are the child's major interacting partners and who start to attribute meaning to the various sounds which baby makes. This develops into what are known as 'proto - conversations,' where baby makes a noise and parent responds. - Baby quickly notices this and makes more noise, to which parent again responds; - and so we begin to build a turn - taking situation. Before you know it the turn taking facet of communication has been established.

Many children who are on the autistic spectrum have a great deal of difficulty with these early communicative developmental stages and so their language and communication development becomes distorted, or in some cases, fails to develop at all. What is needed is to establish exactly where your son is on the developmental ladder of communication and if necessary to take him back over the steps he has missed, so that normal developmental processes have the opportunity to express themselves.

Hope this helps. Check out my website, you might find some useful information there. There is a page where there are free publications on many topics surrounding such issues. www.snowdrop.cc

Hi

The way your post is worded makes me want to ask what support you're getting, if any? My DS has a communication delay and most of the help we've been getting is around turn taking in conversation and games. He's been getting visits in Nursery once a fortnight and SALT (although this has now been withdrawn because he's 'too advanced', sigh...).

As Socratic says, turn-taking is fundamental for all language and communication so, while obviously there's things you can do to encourage it, I'd be concerned if you were left on your own to do this, IYSWIM?

we play a circle game with ds that is atm very simple but can be as complicated as you want. It aims to get ds properly attending to others then providing relevant information.

He goes last - each person has an object (we start with something concrete and move towards abstract) e.g. we'll each have a toy animal. The simplest round is just to pick it up & say 'it's a X' or 'I have an X' - when it's ds' turn he'll have to remember the piece of information we provided (e.g. the name of the object, a feature about it (colour, classification, noise it makes, function etc)) and relay that appropriately to the object he has - not just echo what we've siad. We then move on to more complex information 'My name is X', 'My t-shirt is X', 'I like favourite food/drink/activity/tv programme etc', 'My daddy is called X', 'I am doing X' 'I am X years old' etc

It has been absolutely fabulous at improving his attention to other people (& his confidence). We've also used it to teach him a lot of appropriate gesture/body language & pronoun use. Great at teaching intraverbals too.

Dd1 (6 with AS) is useless at turn taking and likes to be in charge of convosation, she often buts in when people are talking. Have you tried using a ball (or any object), when he has the ball in his hands he talks and when you have the ball you talk (and he listens).

Dd2 is 4 with ASD and struggles with convosation, her speech is not great, i can ask her questions and if im lucky i get a one or two word answer.

I still make people suffer with too much info from me, even as an adult on the autism spectrum . Can't see the signals that say "stop", so I don't. So I have had to learn how to really listen to people's words and calculate what they want me to say or not say. And how long to talk for. Wish I'd had someone to explain the rules much, much earlier on.

IME, one of the most useful things you can do is let the conversation fall silent- in other words, stop maintaining it.

It is a lot more difficult to do than you would imagine.

Many times they will try and fill in the gap- this is a key conversation skill. It is helpful to teach techniques such as reflecting the question back: Do you like this colour? Do you like this colour?

Make sure you look as if you're waiting for him to speak.

Turn taking is hard work.. We use a system of hand signals .. For pauses or to stop or slow down.. We also over exagerate our facial expressions.. Ds is only now picking up on the hand signals and then combining that with a pause.. Look at our facial expression.. And will make a guess as to what he needs to do next.. ( we help him with this).. So if he thinks he needs to stop talking about the inside workings of the latest computer.. He now says " I'll stop talking"... But we may say to him.. " you need to ask me a question about what I think"..
And so on and so on
we've been doing this for years.. But he is starting to get it... Although he has to think about it all the time... And we still have a long way to go.

Ds2 is 11... And texting is a great way to turn take.

Thank you for all the valuable tips.

He did have SALT, but she is pleased that he has language now and is only seeing him 3x per year at school.

We did try hand signals (thumbs-up) when you want to talk, to help him with a visual clue that some-one else needs a turn or have something to say. His siblings are 2 and 4 respectively and it is therefore difficult...

Funny, he is good at turn taking in a circle or in games and school tried passing a teddy, he needs to see the pattern. I tried to share story telling with him. I start with 'long, long ago there was a boy who lived in a forest...' we say one sentence each and he manages this very well. I therefore think he has not seen the 'pattern' in conversation and gets anxious and fires away?

I will contact our SAL-therapist and ask for help. Sounds like we have to be patient and persevere.

There is a Hanen book called talkability which I think is geared more at ASD children once they get language (I have not seen it as not at that stage). There might be videos etc too.

My autism outreach team use something called "Time to Talk' which is a book written by a SLT - you can get it on amazon for about £12 and I think is weekly worksheets for teachers to run a social communication group - again I can't give a recommendation as not seen it in action (Sadly this is the full extent of the team's approach to social skills! but may be worth a look)

There are lots of american videos eg video modelling of communication skills

Or you could look at ABA approach eg Work in Progress by Ron Leaf (Autism Partnership) has info on how they would teach skills via ABA. If you have an AP office near you (Leeds, London, Wilmslow) they run their own social skills groups after school.

Amberlight...you should write a book. Your insights are fantastic.

Autism Outreach Advisory worker has recommended that school buys 'Socially Speaking' by Alison Shroeder for sockial skills programme. School hasn't bought it and I have just received the copy I ordered. Looks quite good though.

Also, what support are you getting through school? I found out the special needs school quite near here 'has been encouraged by OFSTED to develop an outreach programme to support pupils with learning difficulties in mainstream schools. Among the activities they offer are group sessions at the special shool are speech and language sessions, communication groups etc. No one tells you about them - it is just something you have to find out for yourself.