Non-verbal DS reading and writing

[MellowSheep]

Our DS is 6 years old with quite severe autism, especially towards communication. He is non-verbal, the only thing he speaks often is numbers in order to himself. A lot of behaviours have been a struggle, particular around fecal smearing and constant jumping from heights. He is in a specialist school recently, which has been great but mainly they teach him to focus on sitting down for short periods.

But what I wanted to share is a great moment - where I had a list of images for PECS use on a computer. And I was asking him what he wanted for dinner, and he keeps choosing the word ice cream (despite it not being one of the pictures I opened to offer him). From there we realised he was reading quite a lot of words, which was amazing to us (given he largely ignores anyone talking and is non-verbal).

He likes to type the alphabet and numbers out. Today as I was encouraging him to try some typing some more words, he started typing unprompted a whole load of colours. Including some that I would guess are probably quite hard for a child to spell. Just mindblowing to me, its such a massive step for him and it gives me some more hope for his future. I am not sure why I am putting it here, other than to process it and to share that perhaps people in a similar place can see similar things. Does anyone else here have an autistic child communicating like this and how did it progress for them?

This is amazing op, and congratulations on his amazing achievement! ❤️

It's so crazy, my dd wants to connect with people. We went swimming today and she was trying to play with the other children! She understands more than those around her are aware of. I was thinking about putting her in private speech therapy because I think she's close.

We are not in the same space I think, as dd isn't spelling, but we're definitely noticing that our children know more than they're letting on!!

Wishing you the best, hopefully there will be some advice to follow xx

This is lovely to read. Such a great thing to read and thanks for sharing. I'm over the moon for you. 😊

I have a similar son who is six. He is nonverbal, but a real whirlwind and does a lot of food smearing (although he has started to become aware of his nappy being full, so we are buying the accessibility wear from M&S to stop him doing the dreaded faecal smearing) and presents as having a very low IQ with lots of repetitive behaviours and stimming. He is starting to use AAC and I noticed he knows where some words are already. I'm hoping he is the same as your son as we find although he is a lovely character we don't know who he is from his POV and how he sees himself.

There was a very good programme by Chris Packham that had a similar person who is now an adult. He was non verbal and was very articulate once he was able to communicate through AAC. I've seen a few YouTube channels with the same. Best place to ask is the school as they would be able to work with what you have seen.

Thanks both! Yes, we keep mentioning to the school (and sharing videos on the app) and waiting to see NHS speech language next time to tell them (that's also now built into the school). That's my hope, that this could become a channel for him to communicate more freely with the world. For the moment its more just him writing things for himself, but to be able to do that is just great and hopeful. I have often felt he understood far more than people give him credit for, its just his brain does not let him engage or act on that understanding at all. And yes, that adaptive wear from M&S is a complete lifesaver!

You should look into spell to communicate. Just came across it lately so don't have much information but looks really promising