How to encourage the motivation to communicate?

[TongueTwister]

Ds 2.5 is non verbal, we are working on signing and Manding. Please If you any tips on how to motivate him to communicate, share them. He has asd but his receptive skills are very good, he's just not motivated or doesnt understand to ask for things...Any help appreciated.

I recognise the term manding and, while I don't do ABA I have some ideas/things I have tried :)

Does he ever request things through gesture or grunting? Or try and snatch things? If so (after moving things he snatches/helps himself to out of reach) I would start to react much more slowly to non verbal cues (still respond, don't ignore him!) but speed up when he uses any words/ sounds like parts of words (or whatever his level of ability is). When he makes a non language sound or gestures explain that you don't understand and can he tell you what he wants?

I babysit an autistic boy once a week and his communication has got much better simply because I didn't understand all the little quirks that his family recognise so he is forced to reach a little further to reap the benefits. (I now know what all the gestures and 'duh duh duh' sounds mean but I"m not letting on!)

Hi.

Apologies in advance if you have already tried these:

• giving him something he likes only in very small amounts so that there are lots of opportunities to get him to mand for it, e.g break a biscuit into tiny pieces

• placing toys/objects he likes where they are visible but not obtainable without adult help. my ds loves puzzles and books so i got a load of zip lock bags and put them inside and he had to mand open. also those big plastic storage boxes are good.

• a choice board. my ds found it hard to remember he wanted things that were out of sight so the choice board reminded him what the 'options' were

• PECs. we used pecs and sign in total communication approach

• make list of what motivates him most and focus on those things and how to make them into mands, even if they are a bit unusual

• filling in the blanks, e.g. for songs or rhymes

Does he babble a lot and copy sounds like animal sounds or anything? we worked on copying sounds for ages until he felt confident to use them to mand for items.

don't give up - ds1 is almost 4 and he used pecs, sign and has very recently started trying to talk

hope this helps

I found the book it takes two to talk very helPfull. Ds has ASD and speech delay

What worked for DS when we started ABA was figuring out what it was he wanted most in the world (in his case, a push on the swing or a piece of choc) then prompting him to make first the sound "pu", then the whole word "push" before he got the most massive, excited push on the swing as a reward or "reinforcement" for making an attempt at vocalising. The prompting came by showing him mouth movements to copy in order to produce the sound "p", though we had first taught him to imitate gross motor movements so that he understood "do this" means "do what I am doing". Also, he has certain toys he obsesses about and he would only get to hold them if he made an attempt at the right sound. That seems to switch on in the growing brain the idea that different sounds from their mouth elicit different exciting rewards to happen. You have chosen just the right time to do it, also, as this is the age at which the speech centres of the brain are ready to fire up (I think I'm right in saying that the speech "explosion" in nf children occurs at around age 2?). The more you can do to encourage speech before 5, the better, an eminent professor of childhood development told me.

Second It takes two to talk - its by Hanen. Some areas also run Hanen courses (speak to HV or SALT) and I found it extremely worthwhile. It's very like the stuff Jo describes.

Thank you for your replies, we are doing most of your suggestions, maybe we are just not doing them enough... I will take another look at the hanen book I have. I've moved everything out of reach, might try pictures so that he can let me know what he wants, them I can teach him the sign.

Forgot to say, we are working on motor imitation and just recently it's greatly improved so the signing is really coming on.

Something I find works with my dd (v limited language age 9) is to set her up to succeed, modeling questions and answers that i know she can cope with to increase her confidence. E.g. I will say 'DD, you are going to school tomorrow' then a few minutes later I will ask 'Where are you going tomorrow?' DD can confidently answer 'School!' Filling in the gaps in a song or favourite book works for us too.

If you can possibly manage it, go on the PECS training course run by pyramid. It was one of the best things I have ever done and have used more from that course than from anything else I have learned (barring MN). Although it is supposed to be about PECS it isn't really. It is about motivation. My ds is now 5 and very verbal, in many ways ahead when it comes to his motivation/topic of conversation/wants and needs and I STILL use the strategies, although obviously not the equipment etc.

A little boy I worked with was motivated by food especiallly crisps we used 2 MAKATON symbols one with apple and one with crisps and showed him the bowl of crisps. We showed him the cards and said the word when he copied and said crisps he got a crisp.
He was about 3.5 when we did this and he had never spoken at preschool before [many tears from staff].
We made a big thing of signing and saying "good talking" everytime he did it and gradually he began to use more words.
I wasn't sure if he realised that we wanted him to talk before becuase we think that he actually could say quite alot of words but just didn't know he was supposed to IYSWIM.

Good luck

The Hanen book is great but if there's anyway you can get on the course it's a million times better. You get loads of input, get videoed doing exercises (not pretty, but informative ) and meet other parents in the same boat.