Autism/Ideas for teaching

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Expert: - 1/24/2007


Question
I am a program assistant who works with 9 year old diagnosed with autism spectrum, he is non-verbal and not toilet trained, he screams when he wants something and expects people to guess what he wants. Right now I am working with him to try and get him to use a go-talk and pecs communication book, he wants nothing to do with either of them although he plays with books that have the buttons on the side. He does not identify colors, shapes, letters, or numbers. I want to give him a way to communicate without screaming, I also want to give him some motivation to learn, as well as have him learn. Any ideas?  

Answer
hi heather,

when I read your message I had to think of something Donna Williams wrote: She wasn't able to understand speech - but couldn't understand the meaning of pictures either (she calls this phenomenon meaning blindness). If I remember it correctly, she said that she could understand emotions and things she was doing "hands on", but not symbols, gestures and words. I was never completely nonverbal but I can partly understand what it could be like since my own thought process is mostly nonverbal but not exactly visual, either.
I can express myself well enough in a learned every day language (say that I am hungry or that would like to go for a walk) but I often struggle with getting more complex thoughts translated into words - because my thinking isn't in words, so I have in part some understanding of what it's like to have a brain that is wired differently. Luckily my brain only struggles with the more complex stuff, I understand the meaning of words perfectly well (but not necessarily the meaning of full sentences, not to speak of texts or assignments.)
It seems to me that this child is also "meaning blind" which means can't connect the words and the pictures to the real thing. I don't know if it my help if you tried different approaches. Maybe the word "ball" doesn't make sense to him, nor does the picture, but if you throw a ball at him and let  him touch the ball it may be that his brain makes the connection. Let him sniff, touch or even eat/put in his mouth a flower to teach him the word...maybe he could bring you an object to tell you what he wants ?

I can't think of more right now.
Best wishes,
C.

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*DISCLAIMER*

Please note I am not a healthcare professional or a doctor.
I cannot provide a diagnosis or give any medical advice.
Therefore I cannot answer questions like "is my child autistic ?" other than by telling you to go and see a specialist
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Please be aware that if you are in the US it will usually take at least 24 hours until I can answer your question, as I'm in Europe and don't have access to my email during the day. I also cannot answer questions concerning the US educational or law system (other than by looking up things on google, but that's probably not the expertise you need), as I'm not in the US.
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Please also be aware that I'm a person with autism. My answers may sometimes be very blunt and direct and I may tell you things you won't like to hear. Diplomacy is certainly not among my talents. I'm never being rude on purpose, and I always try not to hurt or offend people, but it has happened before and may happen again. It's NEVER on purpose. I just want to help.
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What I *can* do for you is gather information on any aspect of autism and therapy of autism you're interested in and give you my personal oppinion about it (if you want to hear it) or, if it applies, tell you about my personal experience. I can answer all questions about what life is like for an autistic person.

I can also answer questions asked in German or French (but will have to answer in English to questions asked in French as my French is a bit rusty).

Ich beantworte gerne auch Fragen auf Deutsch.

Vous pouvez poser des questions en Francais, si cela ne vous dérange pas que je responds en anglais.

Experience


As I'm not doing well right now and am not in the shape of answering questions well - I recieved a few low ratings lately - I'll take a break from AllExperts for the next few weeks/until I'm doing better

I am an adult diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome/High Functioning Autism and ADD.

In the past years I have also read a lot about autism and its comorbid conditions and related subjects (as I am experiencing symptoms of most of these or know others who do) , so I have accumulated a lot of layman knowledge in this area (AD(H)D, Tourette's Syndrome, OCD, sleep disorders, allergies, sensory integration dysfunction, learning difficulties, left/right-brain, giftedness, Irlen Syndrome, prism glasses, executive dysfunction (aka. "inertia"), "special" diets).

Education/Credentials
None in the field of autism, apart from being autistic myself !

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