If You Don’t Understand My Silence, How Will You Understand My Words?
If You Don’t Understand My Silence, How Will You Understand My Words?
Communication is so much more than just “words.”
Non-verbal cues play such a vital role. So many things go into good communication.
And Jonah wants to do SO MUCH, SO FAST, we have skipped some communication steps.
Jonah is SO GOOD at imitation, he skipped multiple steps and went right to “verbal requesting.”
…without phasing out verbal prompts.
Many times, Jojo is reliant on my knowledge of his non-verbal cues. And that is good. I’m happy to accomodate.
Except, I won’t always be around him and he will need to be able to communicate his needs to others.
So we are taking a few steps back with Jonah’s communication skills.
For instance, he will be trying to grab a bag of chips, and instead of asking me for a bag of chips, he will wait for me to ask him, “Do you want chips?”
And then he will repeat back to me “You want chips?”
What we are going after is for Jojo to initiate “I want chips” without any verbal prompting.
So we are going back to an “I want…” PEC.
We are going back to PECS for the phrases he knows.
He can start by bringing me the “I want…” card and pairing it with “chips” or whatever it is he wants…
Until he can master initiating the conversation…
And we will work back to “I want chips.”
It will be hard work…
But, for a kid who was completely nonverbal when he was diagnosed, this will be a PIECE OF CAKE.