Signing with non verbal 2 yr old

[MangoMonster]

Just wondered if anyone else has used signing to encourage communication and speech? Especially, wrt ASD.

We've just started and its going well, but would like to hear others experiences and opinions on whether you think it actually helped your dc to become verbal.

we haven't but iirc, marne used music therapy quite successful with on of her DDs. maybe worth running a search?

Yes, we did, and yes it did!
My DS had 7 spoken words at 18 months and the same 7 spoken words at 4. He has ASD and mild to mod LD, we started signing with him at about 18 months (I am fluent signer, dh no signs at all) we were using SSE with him, (BSL signs, but english word order and spoken english at the same time.)

He got to the point of abt 200 signs, 3 and 4 sign 'sentences', and was using sign to understand instructions, make his needs known and also to comment on what was around him, ( to chat, infact).

He is now nearly 5, and has speech. (he is not very clear and it is quite ideosyncratic speech at the moment, but for a child that has only been speaking really for the last 9 months he has fab speech, .) We still back up speech with sign and he still signs when he can't get his speech understood. But it has been a life saver for us. His SLT confirms that for him signing gave him language and then speech followed that, it gave him the idea that he could communicate and that it was worth doing... IYSWIM.

Pls PM me it that would be useful...

oops, just noticed I read 'signing' instead of 'signing'. bet you wondered how I brought music therapy into the whole thing. just ignore my post

meant 'singing' instead of 'signing' . seems I can neither read nor type today...

Our ds is 4y 4m and is non verbal (ASD and verbal dyspraxia) he has 4 spoken words but signs like a pro He has hundreds of signs and like signandsmile's ds he signs in complete sentences. It is fair to say that sign is his first language.

He appears to understand the importance of speech, in that he waits for you to say, out loud, the word he is signing.

We started to sign with him from about 18 months old, and we use a combination of baby signs, Makaton, BSL and made up signs.

He has just started in reception and I have to admit that I found it very hard when it dawned on me that he wouldn't be talking by the time he started school.

But his speech is developing, he knows the alphabet and can sound out most of the letters but can not yet put them together to form words. He can sound out the letters of his name but not say it..!!

I dread to think how difficult life would have been for him and us if we hadn't introduced signing.

My DS is 2.4 and has only a handful of words (none used spontaneously). I have just recently got the Makaton info (got a book, and charts from the SALT) and am trying to get this off the ground (me, DH and nanny all trying to do signs with him when we can). It is frustrarting though. He does not seem to get it yet, I must say. He just doesn't seem to notice the signing, and although he will take your hands and place them on things when he wants things done (open a buckle to get out of highchair, press a button to get a toy to make a noise etc) he seems oblivious to the whole signing idea. I am not sure how to improve things. I would love to help him communicate with us, he gets so frustrated sometimes.

thedudesmummy, my ds is the same, oblivious to it most of the time, we prompt him to do the sign and he seems to understand book already, it's only been this week. He can't do it himself but he tries and looks interested. We're using signalong.

I think signing is probably really good in terms of teaching kids the benefit of communication and helping them to get their needs met. I'm just not sure how it aids verbal communication in practice, perhaps I'm missing something as I'm new to it all.

makaton from about 18 mos, but cp not asd. we were told she was unlikely to become verbal so it would be her main form of communication.

tdm - it's quite usual for children not to sign initially - but persevere.

(in a random roundabout, back to singing note though, dd2 would sign along to songs before she used sign in speech - likely because of the makaton dvd but it did reinforce the signs have meanings thing. she's now completely verbal, but like children above, will very occasionally lapse into sign if she can't find the right word. ) it's very infrequent now and surprises me that she can remember! she's 8.

I have bought a couple of the Something Special DVDs. DS loves watching TV (and pays better attention to it than to real life!), so I will try these with him. We will persevere. It's just frustrating!

Hi my DD had a delayed start to speech but was 'talking' (mostly delayed echolalia, still) by 2.5 so not really got any personal exp of this. But, I went to a talk recently by Ros blackburn, a 42 yr old woman with autism. She says pre verbal rather than non verbal, cos you never know wen someone might learn to talk! she cites an example of a 61 year old friend of hers.. She says she talked at 8 yrs, and what she needed was the motivation to talk, as she has no desire for social connections at all. So for her its all about incentives and motivators, and insistent expectations from others. For example if she wants something, food, trampoline, ice skating then she HAS to ask for it. She didnt 'approve' of communication systems, but she is talking from her own experiences, personally I've seen them work. x

Alyswho. You're right about the pre verbal thing, will use that in future. We are using the technique you describe, verbal behaviour, it's all about ds learning to ask for things he wants or needs so he is already motivated, we then prompt him to do the sign and we say the word.

I see what you're saying about her not approving of communications systems, this is the reservation I have but I also know that ds can't learn without communication.

He's too young to tell why he's not talking i.e physical problem or just lack of motivation, so I guess we start with the signing and give him an understanding of why communication is motivating and cross any other bridges when we come to them.

It's so overwhelming to be learning about all the difficulties he could have with speech, it was always something I took for granted.

Good luck! Use everything that gets his interest and stick at it. DD has developed in so many ways I didnt expect, everything has taken longer, but most of it is there now with some facilitating from other people- but thats OK! Keep your expectations high and keep positive about autism, its not a death sentence, its just a different road.. x

we used 'owl' to look for pre-verbal communication in consultation with slt and communication group (before makaton) - 'observe' 'wait' 'listen'. the checklists etc were interesting and did give a picture of the changes over time. it also meant that we could say to childcarers/ nursery - ask/ say something, wait for a response (any response, not verbal) , and then just when you think you aren't going to get one, count to ten slowly before you repeat/ carry on. dd2 was veeeeery slow at processing, and organising herself to respond, so the extra time was really important. frustrating, but important. and it just reminded you of other sorts of response/ communication. worht doing every month or so to see if there have been changes.

In the setting where I work we have used both signing and makaton symbols with 2 non verbal children. Both have been really successful.
With one LO in particular we signed and said "Good talking" every time he used any words, just to let him know that we liked it when he spoke to us.

He did really well and went to Nursery with loads of words and was beginning to experiment with putting 2 words together.

Good luck.

Really encouraging to hear other people's experiences, some of the professionals were sceptical when we started, but it worked for ds and demonstrably so, (and my signing and sign language knowledge was greater than any of the professionals we dealt with, so they were quite accepting, bamboozled them with research/evidence, .

I know it hasn't worked for lots of kids with ASD and I totally 'get' that. It did for us, and what made me so cross was people who were 'ASD specialists' saying things like "signing doesn't work for kids with ASD". Needless to say we didn't end up at that school,

I can see how it could work well for ds if he gets it, just worried that he won't see the need to speak or understand to speak if he signs. I'm probably get way ahead of myself here and should probably just get on with the signing and see where it takes us.

My DS just does not seem to get that he needs to speak or sign. He is content to guide your hands to things he wants done (doesn't point his own fingers, only other people's) or to just scream a bit until you figure out what he wants. It is very difficult at the moment.

mango, all I can say is that all the professionals were saying they didn't know if he would speak or not, it was gonna be wait and see... so I thought well I have nothing to loose, at least he will have communication even if he doesn't have speech. ..

(also, and I know this is different, but it might be useful, research of the last 20 yrs or so has shown that signing with deaf kids does not impair acquisition of speech,)

I have also certainly read that signing, whether "proper" sign langiage like BSL, or Makaton, does not impair the development of speech and may help it, if it is going to develop.

My dd2 is 3 and non verbal, apart from 3 words. We started signing a couple of months ago and it's made a huge difference to our lives. It clicked for her when I offered a biscuit in return for the biscuit sign. I would say to her, would you like a biscuit and sign biscuit. She growled at me and I repeated the question and the sign. After three times I got a very grudging biscuit sign back at me and she got the biscuit. Once she had finished it she signed biscuit at me again =) Since that time she has picked new signs up really quickly and she gets very excited about learning more signs as well.
At this time, it hasn't improved her speech, but it has improved her life. She can communicate more clearly with us and her nursery teacher and seems so much happier.

Can he imitate? We started trying sign when ds1 was 3 (on advice) but he couldn't imitate so it was utterly pointless as he couldn't learn from being shown (he may have learned some signs from hand over hand work but I don't know as we didn't try that - we didn't actually realise he couldn't imitate at the time).

He learned to imitate age 8 and has picked up some signs since the (he's 12 now). His school uses total communication approach so he sees a lot of signs there and to my pleasure he sometimes brings them home. He has a fairly severe dyspraxia though so he tends to alter signs.

We go with the whatever works approach, sign, PECS, hopefully soon a talker, vocalisations. Definitely worth a go, unless your child can't imitate when i would say work on that first (you could still use sign as it might make what you are saying clearer and it tends to slow down speech, but I wouldn't expect a child who can't imitate to pick any up without hand over hand work).

saintly he can't imitate yet, but we are working on that too. We are using hand on hand prompts to teach him the signs.

sassy I think biscuit could well be the first sign ds does unprompted!

dudesmummy we are in the same position except not much guiding in fact not much requesting of any sort. Difficult isn't it.

signandsmile so lovely and encouraging to hear how it's helped your ds.

ineedalife. Great to hear your experiences too, like the "good talking" suggestion.

madwoman will look at "owl", haven't heard of it but sounds like it could be useful. Will also look to incorporate singing and signing as he really loves us singing to him.

Alyswho. Thanks for your words of encouragement, I know it's just a different path, but an unknown one to us at them moment. I think once I see that all the things we are trying are helping him in some way, I'll feel less useless and more confident in our decisions.

Adamsapple it's lovely to hear your experiences and I think you're right, signing is going to help ds so much, need to stop beig fixating on him speaking but focus on him being able to communicate in general. Always thought he'd speak by school age and hopefully he still might. It's the balance of remaining positive but not expecting or fixating...or something along those lines.

chocjunkie, thats just the kind of thing I do, in fact I thought I might have written singing by mistake! :)

Thanks everyone :).

Hi another one here to say that Makaton signing worked superbly with DS a 2 and 3/4 years.

Some of you questions:
No we didn't find it delayed speech at all. It definitely helped him grasp that the sound he heard around him actually meant something. at about a fortnight in he had he sign for yes, not something he'd ever said before. His use of signing comes and go, but when he's having trouble getting his meaning across, having the speech and sign makes it much easier to me guess and model for him what he's trying to say.

instructions and warnings work a whole lot better with signs (e.g. stop, wait, get up, walk or don't run)
Mostly DS talks echolalia-style, but he retreats/reponds better to signing when upset and distressed. I find that when he's upset if tries to sign, even if he's not actually signing anything intelligibly, it can be enough to focus his mind and calm down enough to talk. I think that at meltdown time having as many options to communicate as possible is a really good thing.

dudesmummy
"He is content to guide your hands to things he wants done (doesn't point his own fingers, only other people's) or to just scream a bit until you figure out what he wants."
We had this too, only embarassingly I didn't realise. I'd got too used to him dragging me too it!!!
Makaton really helped with that, I used to act really thick and sign "what do you want?" then I'd sign for example "cup of juice", and then repeat add nauseum. Eventully he started getting the idea.

Thanks lunarRose. I do feel much more hopeful after reading your post and everyone else's. Think I was missing the point and focussing on speech rather than the power of communication.