can anyone tell me what is best practise for a child with ASD and verbal dyspraxia? Moondog or anyone else please help

[cansu]

Dd2 aged 5 years is ASD. Her understanding is between two and three key word level and she can approximate some words, but can only say one part of the word (generally first part of word) and has terrible difficulty sequencing sounds. It has been suggested that she has verbal dyspraxia. Is there anything other than The Nuffield Programme and what kind of work should she be doing? She is pretty bright cognitively, but obviously has limited motivation for stuff that is visually dull (like the Nuffield stuff. Any ideas??

Playing games with the sounds that she finds difficult to begin with maybe? Such as a S sounds for example. Play a game of snakes and ladders and before she has her go both say SSSS together and if she does it correctly she gets double the squares to go up? Keep on one sound until it is perfected but play different games and read books with the S sounds in or whichever sound you are on in. Fun short sessions,and repetition. My ds had some SLT therapy for speech sounds and this is the kind of thing we did. A tape recorder to record herself on she may find it fun to do that as well is another thought.

No specific advice other than to say DD#1 has followed the nuffield dyspraxia programme and we struggled to get her to co-operate for quite a while - then for us I found the power of M&Ms!! We started using them as counters on the pictures, or she could win one if she tried etc etc. She ate a lot to start but then we managed to change the rules gradually to say one being eaten at the end of the page she was doing so we kept the chocolate intake a bit more realistic. The change for her was amazing in her being motivated to do the practice we needed her to do and she did make progress. We tried all the toys where she could win a piece etc etc - only a very limited interest in doing that to be honest.

The Nuffield stuff can be adapted to her interest?

I used to do "boo" and "baa" and "bee" etc with a child who found it very reinforcing to jump out from under a parachute. Initially, every "boo" allowed him back under the parachute. When this was established, he had to do "baa" (on seeing a toy sheep) and then boo etc etc. We tweaked it over time and eventually returned to table top work with breaks for every 20 trials to go under the parachute/different reinforcers.

You can use objects, different visuals etc. No particular reason you have to use their visuals..

Mainly though, it's about making it reinforcing.

Thanks. I guess the key is that someone ie the SALT has to make it reinforcing for her so she will do it!

i'm in the same boat with ds1 who is 3. We haven't tried Nuffield but he seems to like the Jolly Phonics pictures and songs, don't know if you have tried that? I got the CD for a tenner and a wall banner that I cut up and laminated to make A4 picture cards for each letter.

we haven't done it (we are being bored by nuffield) but others have had success with Kauffman cards... the trouble is finding a professional who knows it- our SLT who has been excellent at motivating DD1, has never even heard of it, and our private SLT doesn't have the training/ experience of it.

from what i understand though it takes word approximations and builds on them until the articulation is much closer to what one would expect- sorry not explaining myself well...

Thanks will do some googling on this - am open to any ideas really

Kaufman isn't really that different if you're looking for something that's not table-based/drill-intensive/flashcardy: [http://www.superduperinc.com/products/view.aspx?pid=ns1002 here]

As you can see from the pic of the flashcard in the link, you still have to work through speech-based drills. Vince Carbone is a fan, which is how I learned about it and I attended training a few years ago with Kaufman herself.. but basically, in the tapes at the training I attended, these cards are drilled in much the same way Nuffield would be e.g. it's still all about the repetition.

If you used this method for functional words, perhaps.. but to be honest, most therapists will use a certain "core vocabulary" component e.g. trying to assemble whatever sounds/syllable shapes there are into approximations of words that are functional words for the child. Working with what's there, though.. if that makes sense.

Ooops, link didn't work

Old fashioned way..
www.superduperinc.com/products/view.aspx?pid=ns1002