I've seen over the years where parents and professionals call a child nonverbal, and there's a lot
of emphasis on augmentative communication devices, and no emphasis on vocal language.
And today, I'm going to talk about how I never give up on vocal language.
Hi, I'm Dr. Mary Barbera, autism mom, board-certified behavior analyst, and bestselling author.
I often hear, and when I've done evaluations in the past, I read that a child or a teen
is nonverbal, and on augmentative communication systems, and are having problem behaviors.
And when I inquire about whether the child does have any spoken language, I get things
like, "Oh yeah, he can say Mom, or he can say Mama, or he can say hi," but everything
else is pretty much on his device, or on some kind of augmentative communication system.
And, when I did an evaluation, probably one of my last independent evaluations, it was
a teenager who was living in a residential placement and going to school in approved
private school.
He was 16 or 17 years of age, and he was like a child I'm talking about, where he was labeled
nonverbal.
He's on an augmentative system, obviously having a lot of problem behaviors if he's
in a residential placement and I'm being called in to do an independent evaluation.
And what I found was this boy did have a little bit of vocal language.
He could say Mama.
He could say bead.
It wasn't completely clear.
When I observed him,he could also sing little songs, hum the music, fill in the blanks to
some songs, and most of his requesting or manding was actually with his vocal language.
And one of the things I talk about right away when I see kids with any kind of babbling,
any kind of sounds, or word approximations, is we don't want to just throw in the towel
in terms of vocal language.
We want to look at ways where we can improve that, because if a child can vocally mand
for something, it's just so much easier, less response effort for the child, and much more
speedy in getting a response.
So, with this boy, we also looked at his ability to drink from an open cup, or from a straw.
Right away, I saw him drinking from a water bottle, and water's just spilling out of his
mouth.
That's how low tone his mouth was, so I asked the staff, "Does he ever drink out of a straw?"
Which would be also better in terms of spilling, but it also would be better in terms of oral
motor movements, and just maybe the ability to shape up his articulation a little bit
more.
He was able to drink out of a straw, which was a great first step, and I pointed out
that he had word approximations and spoken words that everyone could understand for several
different items.
So, I do believe that we need to focus more on vocal language.
One of my online course members, Anna, bought my online course a couple of years ago when
her son was 10 years old.
Like this other boy that I'm talking about, her son only had a few words, and the staff
was focusing on an augmentative system.
With the techniques that Anna learned in my program, she was able to teach Nick to say
hundreds of words, with pretty good articulation.
So, I would never rule out the ability to have vocal language.
We have another member of our online community who is getting a teenager, who was previously
completely nonvocal, speaking in short word approximations and words.
So, I'm always a big proponent of assessing and making a plan to improve vocal speech,
if at all possible.
You can get more tips and my brand-new three-step guide by downloading my three-step guide to
help you turn autism around, for a toddler or a teen with autism, and I hope that you
will leave me a comment, download my free guide, and I will see you next week.