If your child is starting to talk, will PECS hold him back?

[mamadadawahwah]

I have a few, well actually a lot of problems with the PECS method of "communication". I dont know why schools use this system for kids who are able to make vocal sounds. For our boy, our SLT was insisting on using the PECS cards. Our boy vocalised constantly and now he is starting to talk, and is using new words every day. I feel that if we had used the PECS cards it would have been just one more unecessary step towards actually talking. What would motivate a child to talk if he can easily get what he wants by handing you a card??

Thats my thinking on it anyway and our experience of pecs has been negative. Again, the "recipe book" approach that all autistic children might benefit from PECS, or Makaton, simply isnt true. Our kids are so different.

I didn't use 'full' PECS for either ds but I found that in some situations the pictures/symbols were very useful, even though by this time they were both able to speak. Ds2 found it particularly useful when it came to making choices. If asked which he wanted (objects, songs etc) he would just repeat the last one mentioned. When given the symbols he was able to choose which he wanted. In general I would say that the symbols were good for helping with comprehension rather than expression.

IME using the cards hasn't slowed down the progression of spoken language but has actually helped to build it up, particularly for words which aren't nouns. It helps/helped ds to visualise the more abstract concepts. Ds2, for example didn't understand "good boy" for a long time. If I told him he was a good boy he would say "No I'm not. I'm ". The PECS symbol helped him to understand.

I agree though that just because something might work for one child it doesn't necessarily follow that it will work for another child.

I tend the not use them unless ds2 is having a paddy then we can use them to try and work out what the matter is - we also use the visual timetable. I also thought that it might hold him back - he is very verbal but i still keep them available to him iyswim.

In DS1s case PECS improves his speech- especially if the cards are separated so with a separate card for I and for Want and for biscuit we get I an ee een articulated. With the I want card + biscuit card we get aya ee een and with no cards we get dragged and our hands placed on the cupboards. I think there is an issue in the UK of people using PECS instead of attempting to teach children to speak, but that's a different issue.

The published research has shown that withdrawing PECS too early in a child using the system will damage speech aquisition. Once children are talking well they would tend to lose PECS anyway, why bother with velcro if you can say what you want in 2 seconds.

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yeah we had that with signing Fio. I suppose an indication of why its important to ensure that there is access to people that can use all these different types of AAC methods. We had no access to a PECS trained specialist until ds1 was almost 5 (having been dxed at 3) and it was the only method that worked for him then. I did notice in ds1's school the other day that some children were signing, some were using VOCA, some PECS and some speech. Lovely thing of course being that the staff are pretty proficient in all these techniques so it can all be tailored.

Now ds1 can imitate we can start on signing as well, and it's good to know he' exposed to that at school as well.

TBH this is similar to the don't sign it'll stop your child speaking debate.Both can be used to support the speech and like Copper said it can help comprehension when a child doesn't understand speech.LAter they may stop using it the problems come when PECS ispushed when it isn't needed.

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I would say that PECs 'unlocked' speech for DS2 - but that the DTT methods we're using for receptive and expressive language atm are increasing his vocab. more quickly. He still needs the PECs most of the time though - it helps him a lot with word retrieval.

I was very resistant to it when we first tried (at 2.5) because I was certain it would hold back his speech. I couldn't have been more wrong.

We have had that problem with one of our kids (at school) and our solution was to put a red cross over the thing that wasa unavailable, but as with any system you need quite a while to 'teach' the child what it means

As a teacher i have used PECS really succesfully with a number of children. Two of whom started to communicate verbally through using it. I found that the symbols gave meaning to the words they were saying and helped them realise that the words/symbols had meaning to other people (if that makes sense)

We have a red page in their PECS book and if the symbol is on the red page then they can't have it. On the front of the book we have an orange circle. If the symbol is on the orange circle then they have to wait for the item. IMHO I have never been keen on taking away symbols but instead teaching them the red page / orange circle idea. 'No' and 'wait' are such really hard concepts that it is a lot to expect for any child to understand and to accept. We did find that a concrete visual aid helped with these concepts though.

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We(staff) all have a clip on set on symbols with things like wait,quiet,sit that we can use in assembly,when out etc

ds2 struggles with wait cards, but has learned to tolerate short waits through the use of countdown buttons. so they go on the pecs strip along with whatever he's waiting for and get his finger, 3, 2, 1 then whatever he's waiting for , take one button off, then 2, 1 then say whatever he's waiting for then one button off until you get to the item.

Seems strange that there hasn't been a consistant solution to this problem considering PECS is a national/international? communication

Just thought that some of these suggestions would be incorparated into the initial training!
I can remember us spending ages comparing diferent methods/ideas to say no, if all these ideas were in the training(and others could be added later?)

I liked the red page idea thoughI know one of our kids wouldn't like it as he has to have his symbols in the exact same pages in his book!

The PECS extension training courses (eg PECS throughout the day) DO go into these sorts of things- they provide quite a lot of time to swap ideas and strategies between the people attending. The PECS conference did the same thing. I think giving all in the initial 2 day training would be a bit overwhelming as there's quite a lot to take in as it is. It's one reason why I love special schools as well- a lot of experience in one place so access to lots of different solutions. In mainstream (well there wasn't anyone PECS trained so there really wasn't any hlep) there wasn't easy access to experience and thinking outside the box.

Nothing like that was covered on our course, we had an in house discussion/problem solving day and this was one of the things that we discussed.

Who did your training? If it's in house it might be different because I guess it will depend on what the provider wants. But Pyramind runs regular courses. The 2 day workshop for the basic training. I haven't been on many of the others- but the PECS throughout the day was good for discussing things that people had found useful in their own situation. And the group was much smaller so easier to swap information. Also been to the annual conference, that was less use in some ways, but lots of smaller sessions that gave some interesting approaches. It;s entirely adapatable though. I know that ds1's old treacher has given presentations to groups of teachers where I would assume he might share things like the countdown strategy. I'm personally quite keen on splitting the I want card into 2 separate ones with DS1 as it helps his speech.

We had someone come to us for a whole school training (nearly 6 years ago onw so can't remember who) so it was prob tailored to us .We do updates every so often but they are run by the teachers who have been on more courses/conferences.

I would love to go to some of the bigger courses/conferences but we don't often get the opportunities especially as we tend to have to travel quite a bit to get to anything.