When I was young, I used to have a terrifying, recurring nightmare.
In some of these dreams, I was in danger and desperate to alert my parents to this. In others, I was very angry and needed to shout, to vent, to express this rage somehow. In some dreams, I was excited and had a lot to say in that moment and wanted to share my thoughts with someone.
But in all these dreams- I could not speak. I opened my mouth and felt an overwhelming and urgent need to communicate. But no sound would come out. No matter how hard I tried. I had no voice. I used to wake up, disturbed, sweating, sad.
So, when my autistic child was non-verbal for the first four years of his life and could not babble, or talk, or even point with his fingers to show me what he wanted, and what was in his head, or his heart, I could feel his frustration and his pain. I could feel his sadness. And most of all, I could feel his fear.
We have all heard the saying, regarding a non-verbal or pre-verbal autistic child that:
“Just because I cannot speak doesn’t mean I don’t have plenty to say”
Non-verbal children can understand us, feel our emotions, note our expressions. They dream, think and feel so many different things. They have so much to say. They need to have some control of their day, and their lives, even if they have no spoken words, or fully do not understand our words. They need to display their beautiful, and often vibrant, personalities. They need to socially engage with others, their caregivers, and their peers, despite all the sensory challenges which come with autism. They need a lot attention and to be understood. They need respect. They need to play. They need joy. They need to be able to show us when they are in pain, uncomfortable or scared.
So how can we help them to communicate without speaking?
We all have our own unique way of learning things. There are four main types of learners: 1) Visual; those who prefer to see information and visualise the relationship between ideas 2) Auditory, who learn by hearing things 3) Readers and Writers; those who learn best when they write down the text themselves, and 4) Kinaesthetic; those who like to actively do and practise things in order to understand them.
Children with communication and/or learning difficulties are usually (but not all the time) the first kind of learners: VISUAL learner, those who learn by seeing information. They learn and understand more, from what they see, instead of what they, for example, hear.
These children might benefit from visual aids.
Visual aids gave my son, the ability to communicate for the first time. And they also gave us, his parents, the ability for us to communicate with him.
I remember how his whole face lit up when I showed him a picture of our garden to show him that we were going to play in the garden. Also, being able to use the picture and hand it over to me later to express his wish of wanting to go play in the garden with me, made him feel, for the first time, in control of a large, scary world.
Visual aids are used, in addition to spoken information and not in replacing it. They can consist of videos, photographs, coloured pictures, and symbols, to name a few. They may be used to express a word or meaning or develop a timetable for children to understand what is going on in their day or for “now-later” or “first-then sequences.” They can be made portable and durable for all and any use throughout the day.
Visual aids greatly aid choice-making, comprehension and as a result they eventually aid spoken communication. They are great for verbal children as well, to teach them things, or regulate them, or to help with sensory differences.
Many visual learners learn to read even before they speak. Exposure to a few consistent words used alongside pictures in these visual aids can facilitate eventual communication, along with giving them a sense of control over their day, an idea of the usefulness of using spoken words, and improve their relationship with their caregivers. Read my next blog for some examples of visual aids that I used that may help you too.
The author is a human rights lawyer formerly working in London and Islamabad and is presently a full-time carer to her son, who has been diagnosed with autism and global development delay. You can find more of her blogs on www.oursmallwonders.org
