A bit of help

[theowlandthepussycat]

Hello! I hope you don't mind me posting in your boards, but I saw somebody else asking for a bit of career advice and so I thought perhaps some of you would be able to help me out.

I am a second year English student at Oxford (it's not all punts and tweed, I promise!) and have volunteered with special needs children since I was 14. I spent my gap year working as a TA in an SLD/PMLD/EBD school, and still work there full-time in my holidays. It's the best job in the world and is definitely where my future lies. Anyway, to get to my point, I have to do a coursework paper on language next term, and am starting my research. The topic I desperately want to work on is language used by children with autism (usually people do 'the language of politicians' or 'the language of the media' etc). I think it's really interesting to look at their sentence structure, the semantic / pragmatic relationship, the literal interpretations of metaphor and why, and which words they choose to repeat or become obsessed by. I'm hoping that it'll really help not only myself but other people to understand autism better and help me on my way to becoming a better educational psychologist or SALT. I hope I'm not coming across as offensive at all.

I would just love to hear some of the things your DCs say which you think are funny, quirky or interesting. It can be about anything and if I'm being too intrusive then please say, or PM me. Thank you so much in advance and sorry for the ridiculously long message.

PS If anyone needs an ABA tutor (I'm learning) in Oxford or London, or just a bit of babysitting, I'd be more than happy to help out!

Feel free to pm me too, my dd is 5 and on the autistic spectrum. She is part of a study for a student at our university, I was looking for extra support with SALT. She has improved a lot in recent months but has trouble with concepts such as time, or even learning about topics like 'emergency services' can lead to anxiety as she assumes all smoke means fire...like DP cooking! We try to improve her following instructions by breaking it down, we once played 'hotter and colder' but she recoiled at 'hot' thinking it would hurt.DD likes to repeat from films, although she doesnt repeat things correctly and her new favourite word is 'perfect'. I could go on for ever so Ill stop now....I have a few reports, videos and diaries that may be of use to you so as I said pm me. :) Good luck.

I have two children with autism. My eldest ds now 16 at one time had fluent speech after gaining "normal" speech at age 7. He is now more or less mute but can communicate eloquently through email.
My dd aged 8 has very normal speech in fact it is seemingly advanced as she has a vast vocabulary, uses idioms and sophisticated speech patterns seemingly effortlessly however she does in fact have to make a huge effort to reply to questions, make requests and alert others to her needs and she still slips into delayed echolalia when she doesn't want to make the effort.
Happy to help you if you pm me.

Just wanted to check if you meant language or speech? (if it is language then feel free to pm me about my ds)

ds 4.5 ASD (and LD) minimal verbal speech,but quite highly developed signing) and many of the issues are eveident there too.. (for eg signed echoalia is called echopraxia, repetition and rigidity are still evident)

Just thought might be useful counter point, please ignore if not helpful

Playskill is a charity which runs Specialist Playgroups for Children with Physical needs. Our term-time groups for preschool children aged 1-5 yrs take place in Watford and Hemel Hempstead. Run by a skilled team including a Physiotherapist, Occupational and Speech and Language Therapist. Please see www.playskill.co.uk to contact us.

Monday Watford 9.30 to 11.30 (term time)
Wednesday Watford 12.30 to 2.30 (term-time)
Friday Hemel Hempstead 9.30 to 11.30 (term time)
£2 per session or 50p if on benefits

signandsmile Thank you! That is an extremely interesting and helpful point - the paper is on language and therefore I think it'd be quite clever to include some non-verbal communications as well. I can speak quite a lot of BSL and Makaton so that'll make it easier. I will PM you this evening if that's alright with you?

ASD and super I will PM you too as soon as I have some proper time, thank you so much for your help as well. The videos etc sound brilliant - I can't thank you enough for everything. I'll have to send your DCs chocolate and annoying toys they'll love and you'll hate as soon as this is finished.

Hi theowl - I am a SALT and my first degree was in English, not at Oxford but in a similarly punty and tweedy institution! I think what Starlight has said is important and I just want to say that what SLT desperately needs is people who have a very sophisticated understanding of language, quality academic credentials and oodles of hands on experience working with a range of children and young people with autism. You won't have to hang around here too long to realise that many parents of children with autism have received woefully inadequate language intervention from therapists who have a "painting by numbers" understanding of the language of autism (and of autism itself, to be honest). In developing your understanding of autism, you must assume nothing and be extremely critical of any sentence in any journal or book that generalises about the language or communication of children with autism. Children with autism are not a homogenous population and though there may be commonalities, there are also huge variations between individuals.

It is a hugely complex area but one which is very worthy of further research and it's great you are so directed at this early stage of your career. I would recommend that you read about echolalia and gestalt language processing in the course of researching this paper and consider the role of top-down processing of language vs "bottom up". Look at the work of Dorothy Bishop (which I am assuming you will as she is at Oxford) around pragmatic language impairment and semantic and pragmatic language disorder (which is basically a descriptor for the language of those on the spectrum vs a separate disorder, although this is somewhat controversial). Once I knew all the references for these but I have recently returned to work after maternity and my brain is not as fresh as it once was. Good luck!

Thank you working, that's all really helpful. I have contacted Dorothy Bishop already so I hope she can give me some pointers.

I understand that autism varies widely in every aspect - I'll be looking for patterns of speech and analysing the meaning and use of disordered language / echolalia etc and will have to come to some conclusion just due to the nature of my coursework. That's why an opportunity like star has presented is amazing - a case study with lots of language to get my teeth into. But I think it'll give me a chance to get to grips with language and have a better understanding for the future - this paper is really just an excuse to follow my interests. I am now setting about researching your suggestions! Would it be alright to PM you if I get confused? Thanks again

My DS is non-verbal but very communicative with a mixture of PECs, Makaton, gestures and insistent "uhs"! Let me know if you want any more info. I would suggest you look at an organisation called Communication Matters which is in Oxford and deals with AAC (Augmentative, Alternative Communication) which can be as simple as pictures such as PECs and visual timetables etc or more usually communication machines (think Stephen Hawking's device!).

Just remembered the term VOCAs which is what OM deals with mostly (Voice Output Communication Aid).

Hi, i have a 5year old dd with ASD and severe language disorder, her speach is improving but she often says things like 'what do want' when she wants to ask us for something, she has only just started stringing sentances together and often misses out words such as 'and', 'the' ect..

She also uses PECs to communicate at school (when people cant understand what she is saying).

my dd1 is extremely verbal - so much so that she, at first glance and as long as everything is working well that day!, appears NT.

however she is severely autistic.

she has learnt all her language in an odd way - she sang before she could talk, and then slowly moved on to learning sing-song rhyming stories off by heart (eg the Gruffalo etc).

slowly, slowly, once she knew the whole story, she would begin to unpick it, and actually be able to understand the odd word or so - so all completely top-down, rather than bottom-up.

once she started realising language could help her in everyday life, rather than just being somehting to pass the time with, she again learnt whole phrases and conversations, initially as a string of sounds without meaning, but then over time was able to add meaning to a single word, and build it up form there.

she is extremely echolalic, even now, and will lapse into this whenever even slightly stressed.

do PM me, if you think dd1 sounds up your street . I am in Surrey (and if you are serious about the babysitting, then please do get in touch!)

oh, sorry, meant to say - now that she is more verbal, she has a similar hting going on to Star's ds.

so, eg she is very interested in clocks at the moment, and will constantly ask "what clock it is half past now?" - she can just about tell the time, and she also knows to ask properly, but this seems to be how she has categorised it for now...

if she learns a phrase as a phrase, then her grammar is good. but now that she is trying to generate a lot more language, it is very garbled.

Oh that is interesting Silverfrog. My DS is another one who learnt to sing before talking, he has a huge repertoire of songs! And just the other day I heard him reciting an audiobook for the first time.
Normally he is on 3-4-5 word sentences.

My ds is another one who learnt from the top down only he learnt to read before three and then learnt to talk from the subtitles on the TV.He could read fluently out loud but could only use the odd word interspersed with language when it was his own speech.
Nowadays he communicates through beautifully eloquent emails but struggles to string a sentence together when he is expected to talk.

Feel free to pm me also

some examples of my ds 4

'arrrr that's a nice bath' meaning that's a nice cuddle/ teddy anyhing really lol

'get yourself a straw' meaning can I have a straw please?

'can I have him?' this can mean anything from food to a person and he can't describe or go into any more detail... Veyfrustrating lol

Also ds reads books over and over repeating the phrases he has heard... I have a video of this somewhere it's hilarious

HI,

My ds 9, ASD with severely delayed receptive and expressive language answered yes when his SALT asked if he like swings. She took this as not understanding the question because we had said he did not like going on swings - however, he does like looking at people on swings.

Ds told dh he wanted dh to cut the crust (of his slice of bread). However, when dh said, ' You want me to cut the crust OFF?', ds said no. Turned out he wanted to have the crust of the bread only.

I made a mistake by telling dd that if she watches too much television, she'd get square eyes. He repeats it a lot now, saying, 'xx will get square eyes for a long time if she watches too much television.'

When he gets upset, he says gets echolalic.