Expert: Trey McGowan - 1/25/2008

Question
My son is 4 yrs old as of Dec. '07. He was diagnosed, officially, in Oct. of '07 with the Autism Spectrum Disorder PDD.   He eats well, almost never gets sick, has never had an ear infection, and is on par (and beyond) with his gross and fine motor skills. He can dress himself, feed himself and even help me in the kitchen. He only has a problem with buttons and snaps. He also has the ability to engage in imaginative play and has recently begun showing an interest in playing with other children. He is also affectionate if he likes someone.   Our big concern is he is largely non-verbal. He began attending an SES-Pre-K in August of '07 and gets speech therapy anywhere from 0-3 times a week with the school speech therapist, but the sessions are anywhere from 15-45 minutes. It's been indicated to us by his teacher that he would do better having a private speech therapist. We've spoken to our doctor, he submitted the referral but there is a 3 month waiting list.   My question is, where he's going to go for his speech therapy it is 2 days a week, 4 hours per day (intensive): About how long will it take for the speech therapy to kick in? What can I do for him at home before and during his time with the private speech therapist? He sometimes looks as if he's trying to speak to us but can't and it leads to him having a meltdown.

Answer
Hi there, Mina!

Communication issues can be the most frustrating issues for the autistic child. And, as you have noticed, they can lead to some of the biggest bouts of frustration. It's not at all an uncommon one, so at the very least, you can be reassured that there are a lot of other folks out there with the same issues!

I wish I could answer 'How long will it take to kick in', but it can vary by so much, depending on the child and on what they are doing. It may be within a couple days, or it may take a few months. You will generally be able to see some sort of small work within a couple weeks, though. Just don't get your hopes up that within those couple weeks, he'll start babbling merrily along. With some children, it can take a long while, and some may never be able to break through their lack of verbalization skills.

In the meantime, if he is trying to speak and can't, see what you can do about finding a language that he *can* use. At 4 years old, he's probably too young to be able to do much in the way of writing or typing (although I've seen some amazingly precocious writers), but maybe you can start learning ASL together? Look into some of the symbols as well, and see if maybe those can help out. They have keyboards for the non-verbal autistics, and those can be a big help as well. Sometimes, while verbal skills are impaired for whatever reason, the general communication ones aren't. So by trying those, it may help him get his message(s) across, and thus save on some stress for both of you!

I'm not sure of what sort of progress the school speech therapist has had, if any, so I can't make more specific suggestions as to what might and might not work. Maybe if you speak with them and find out what's been done and what progress was made, you'll be able to get some ideas. Or at the very least, be able to toss some follow-ups and I'll see if I can come up with other ideas. For now, though, I'd rather not make more meltdowns by trying to throw random suggestions for verbal skills.

Hopefully that's giving some ideas and reassurance to you! I wish you all the best, and feel free to return any feedback, questions, follow-ups, or whatever to me.

Trey