Image courtesy of LeyaHoeni on Pixabay.com
Note: This is how most non-oral language systems are set up, everything in neat categories with only a little overlap. But, life doesn’t work that way.
How Many People Do You Interact With Every Day?
Try this thought experiment: I want you, the reader, to think about all of the individuals you may cross paths with during any given day. The people who live in your home with you. Any pets who demand your time and attention early in the morning – you talk to them, too, right? If you go to a store, how many people do you talk to? Think about all the times you say ‘excuse, me’ or ‘sorry’ while shopping. Did you chat with anyone while you were getting gas this morning? Did you say, “Thanks, have a great day!” to the Amazon Fairy when they delivered your overnight order this morning? How many people do you talk with at work? How many times do you change the register to match the interactions you’re engaged in? What activities do you participate in outside of work? Who do you interact with during those activities? How many ways to do you interact with people during the day? Think about the people you interact with via text or through social media even though you may not ever actually talk to those people. Think about the emails you send and read every day. Think about the people you speak with on the phone.
If you actually keep a tally of all the people you interact with on a daily basis, the number will probably easily be in the double digits – every day. Depending your job, and/or life, and/or personality, you may communicate with more than 100 people every day. They may not be the same people, you may not know them or know them well. But, that’s not the point. The point is you have the tool that makes all of these interactions possible. You have your language skills, no matter how you combine your verbal, gestural, or written language skills during a given day.
Inclusion Means More Opportunities to Be Included in Your Own Life
If you’re reading this, that means your mature language skills give you opportunity to be as included as you choose to be in your own life.
Now, think about your clients who are non-verbal or limited verbal communicators. Focus on one client in particular. Picture this person in your mind.
Walk through the same thought experiment you went through above. How many individuals can this person interact with independently? Chances are, they are very limited in the number of people who can be considered communication partners. When you’re a non-verbal or limited verbal communicator, your communication partners are severely limited. Generally, you’re restricted to family members and caregivers who know you best.
Think about that for a moment. When you’re a non-verbal or limited verbal communicator, you’re already limited in the number of people you can communicate with effectively. The ways in which you’re able to communicate are limited, especially if you can’t read, write, and/or type. And, if your body doesn’t work the same way everyone else’s does, your non-oral language options are limited that much more.
I want you to really think about this for a moment. What if you were a school-age child who was non-verbal? What if you were a teenager who was non-verbal?
Think about how we interpret the non-verbal communication signals of infants at the pre-linguistic stage. They use a combination of body positioning and posturing, facial expressions, and vocalizations to communicate, right? Infants at the prelinguistic stage of development rely on others to interpret the meaning of their communicative attempts. And, adults generally are pretty good at figuring out what they mean after some trial and error. We don’t say infants are being “non-compliant” or “lazy” or “naughty” or “bad.” We don’t set infants up for failure and “meltdowns” because we didn’t pay attention to or understand their attempts to communicate with us.
Now, put yourself in the shoes of a non-verbal communicator. Really settle into this person’s shoes for a moment. Imagine what it would be like to be a preschool-age child who has learned to use an AAC system that suddenly isn’t available on the first day of kindergarten. First, that’s a very real situation my clients face where I live. It’s been openly stated by local school district that PECS is what every non-verbal child is taught if the child attends their program. Seriously. I heard it straight from the speech therapist’s mouth myself (I’m using the term “speech therapist” because this district still hires people with only a bachelor’s degree as “speech language therapists” because you can only call yourself a speech-language pathologist if you have a Master’s degree from an accredited program.) Secondly, as adults, we do this exact same thing to typically developing and special needs children who come from non-English speaking homes every year. Imagine if you were dropped off in the train station in Beijing or New Dehli and you’d rarely ever heard the primary languages spoken in those cities, much less never spoken a word of them! Welcome to the first day of kindergarten for many, many kids from CLD homes in the United States!
Let’s try this thought experiment:
Often, if you’re a non-verbal communicator and you’re older than an infant, you get called all of those things – non-compliant, lazy, bad. Because, most likely, you tried to tell others around you that you didn’t want or didn’t like something in all the ways you could. Maybe you just don’t feel good or something hurts or you’re scared. You try to tell them in every way you have available to you – facial expressions, vocalizations, natural gestures like shaking your head no, pushing things away with your hands, trying to move away, crying, throwing, trying to hit or scratch them, and finally hitting yourself in frustration. The people around you didn’t get your message, so now it’s your fault and you’re being non-compliant.
Someone tries to teach you signs. Some of the signs are pretty easy for you to copy and to approximate like “more.” You just have to bring your hands together in front of you to approximate that one. “All done” is pretty easy, too. You can pretty closely approximate the hand shake that means “all done.” But, now the adults want you to start signing “help.” It’s really, really hard for you to close one hand into a fist to approximate the sign. They help you with hand-over-hand assistance. You get what you’re supposed to do, it’s just that your body won’t do it. You do the best you can. You learn the signs, but you can really only use them with your mom, your speech-language pathologist, and your siblings. No one else can figure out what you’re trying to say. Some people who don’t know you don’t even seem to know that you’re signing to them.
Then, someone comes along and sticks icons in front of you, small pictures that depict the noun or verb or modifier that make sense to them but not to you. After all, the adults can read the words under the icons, but you can’t. You don’t have the same world experience of other children your age either. So, that 1×1 inch image of a red box on a line with an arrow pointing to the line doesn’t mean “on” to you. At least, not yet. Little kids just learning to speak get multiple opportunities to learn “on” from adults. With typically developing children, adults use the word in multiple contexts and put it in phrase final position to emphasize the word and the concept in the speech stream. Adults manipulate objects in the environment to demonstrate “on” for very young children. But you, you’re just expected to know this concept somehow. And then, you’re expected to immediately understand that some abstract line drawing in a 1×1 inch square in the middle of a bunch of other line drawings that look pretty much the same means “on.” I mean, it’s not like anyone even checked to make sure you can see the 1×1 inch icons in the first place, did they?
Flash forward a couple of months. Now, you’ve sorta figured out the system that someone has introduced to you. You’ve figured out how to tap the squares on the screen to make the tablet talk even though it’s really hard for you to tell where to press, separate out your pointer finger from the rest of your fingers, and make sure to hit the right button. It would really, really help if there was an actual button for you to push like on your toys. Still, you pretty quickly figured out which icons go with the things you really like. You start to use them, just like you’ve been taught.
All of the sudden, the adults decide that you’re being annoying because you’ve learned just what they taught you. You use the icons to ask for what you want. But, they decide you’ve had enough of what you actually want or they’re tired of hearing you ask for it. So they hide the button from you. The adults in your world often leave the communication board and/or speech-generating device (SGD) behind when you leave your room. It’s rare that you have access to them outside of your room. And, you never have access to the board or to the SGD outside of the house. Instead, you have to fall back on the general messages you can communicate through your body and your actions. It just never occurs to the adults in your life that your communication board and/or your SGD are just as necessary for you as their phone is for them. They’re never without their phone. You’ve seen them panic when they can’t find it for a whole 5 minutes – because they might miss something. Never mind that you have to miss out all the time because you can’t tell other people what you want without the communication board or the SGD!
Flash forward a couple of years. Your parents decided not to send you to the school district’s preschool program so you could get more intensive 1:1 therapy at home. Now, you’re ready to start kindergarten. You can say a few words now when you’re really excited or mad. But, you can’t just pop out the words voluntarily. An understanding SLP has explained this to your mom who seems to get it, but not all of the adults in your life do. They don’t understand you can only get the words out when you’re not thinking about saying them. You’ve been working with the SLP and an SGD for the last couple of years. The SLP has helped adults understand you need to take the SGD with you everywhere (or at least a communication board) because it’s your voice. The SLP has helped you figure out how to use the dynamic screens and you’ve learned to put sentences and questions together. You’ve learned to use the SGD to request what you want, to respond to other people’s questions, and to make comments and jokes. Now though, the SGD isn’t going to go to school with you. That’s for a couple of reasons. First, it’s expensive and your family doesn’t want to send it back and forth to school every day. Second, the people at school tell your parents they’ll make sure you have what you need. Your parents have told the school people what you use at home and that they hope the school will use the same system with you.
But, when you get to school, there’s no SGD for you to use. There are icons, but they’re not the same ones you’re used to using. And, the icons are all over the room rather than being on a communication board like the one you’re used to. The teachers and staff expect you to sign to them. Yet, making your hands form signs is just as hard as it was when you were younger. Basically, you’ve been dropped off in place where no one speaks your language. And, you’re expected to learn their language. ASAP – now. Yesterday.
You’re given a small notebook with 2×2 inch laminated icons velcroed to the front. You don’t know this, but your parents were told that this is the system all kindergartners who can’t talk are given at school. You don’t recognize them because they’re not the same symbols you have on your SGD at home. The adults can read the words under the icons, but you still haven’t learned to read yet. That’s why you’re going to school, right? You hear the adults talk about you, talking about how they thought you were supposed to know more than this, that you were supposed to know “more” than you’ve shown them. You do know “more” – a lot more. But, you’re having to learn their system. They don’t have to learn yours. So, you go from being expected to use statements and questions on your dynamic display SGD at home to being told to grab single pictures and hand them to an adult when they tell you to. You’re back to being able to ask for “more” when you can really ask for specific things by describing them. You can make jokes with your SGD at home.
But at school, the teachers are asking you to learn another language because it’s easier for them. Aren’t they supposed to be the adults?
Outside The Box 