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Conversation As I read more on parent discussion boards, it soon became evident that although Zachary knew a ton of words, the fact that he spoke in labels and commands meant he was still “non-verbal” in that actual communication still was not there. I soon realized that the term “non-verbal” was a term that meant many different things to many parents. In my view, “non-verbal” should mean that a child only had a few words or none at all. “Non-conversing” was a more appropriate label for children like Zachary – children who had a wonderful vocabulary but still could not carry on a conversation. As much as I hated all labels, at least this one was more appropriate. I now needed to figure out how to "get" actual conversation from Zachary. Coincidently, another factor would fall into place just at the time I needed it to. Zachary had been on a supplement called TMG (a Kirkman Labs product) for close to two years now. Kirkman Labs specialized in products for the autistic. This particular supplement was supposed to help trigger language in autistic children, and I did suspect it did do that for Zachary - initially. I ended up running out of TMG in early July of 2002, just as we were leaving for a trip to visit relatives in Canada and, at the time, I decided that since Zachary was now on enzymes, I would no longer use the TMG and see how that went. TMG had a pretty strong dose of vitamin B in it and from parent discussions on the enzymes and autism Yahoo group, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/enzymesandautism/, I came to see that many parents felt their children could no longer tolerate TMG and other mega-dose vitamin products once their children were on enzymes. Enzymes helped to better break down food and supplements taken in by the autistic child, and as such, fewer supplements seemed to be necessary. To my utter amazement, within a couple of days of being off the TMG, Zachary actually started to show more conversation... more actual responding to questions using more words. I could not believe it and thought it was just me... until others noticed it too. I did not know if this was just a "fluke" or if there was more to this... but I did know, that for Zachary, conversation started after I took him off the TMG. I wondered as to why that could be. I had never seen any studies on the long-term use of TMG and the result of then "going off the supplement"... so, I really had nothing to go on... just this one observation... in my own son. Like other parents, I suspected that the enzymes did indeed allow Zachary to absorb more of his supplements and that perhaps now, he was actually getting too much Vitamin B. I had also removed the Super Nu Thera from Zachary's supplement list, again, based on comments from other parents who stated that "mega dose" vitamins had negative effects on their children once they were placed on enzymes. I had learned enough the hard way... so when the enzymes went in... the Super Nu Thera went out... it was only a couple of months later that the TMG ran out. I had placed Zachary on a regular cfgf (casein free, gluten free) multivitamin and so the TMG had been providing an extra dose of Vitamin B he probably no longer needed once on enzymes. Again, this was simply a theory based on what I observed in my son - but literally within days of being off TMG, Zachary started to show signs of the ability to hold a conversation... it could have been a "fluke", "a coincidence", but I had no way to know either way. At the time of the writing of this text, Zachary has been off TMG for about 2 months and his conversation skills were truly improving. This was the point at which we were. But, we had made progress even in the last month and so I wanted to share with parents my ideas/thoughts in this area as well... in terms of how I was tackling the whole issue of conversation based on what I had come to understand in terms of the autistic child's inability to process the whole without first understanding the parts that made up that whole. The challenge with conversation was that it was random... it had no order. So, how do you even begin to bring order to something that had no order? How do you break down the "parts" to a sentence, for example, so that a very young child could understand how the "parts" of a sentence "fit together" to form a sentence and that sentences were then put together to form conversation. I had noticed for a long time that if I asked Zachary to repeat a sentence, he could repeat the first few words, but then, the rest got all "garbled" as he tried to recall and repeat it. Why was that, I wondered? Well, if you think about this issue of language in terms of the autistic child's inability to process the partial, what I believed to be the root cause of almost all their problems, then it all started to make perfect sense. Letters, sounds, words... all of these, in and of themselves provided a "label" of some kind. For example, "A"... this was the letter "A"... that letter was now recognized as an entity in and of itself once it had a label specific to it and it only. The same was true for sounds and words... they provided "labels" for things and became entities in and of themselves... the "part" had now taken on a whole and so, it now became very, very easy for the autistic child to communicate in labels because these "names" for things define specific objects... whether those objects were "wholes" or "parts" of something else... the label made objects entities in and of themselves. For example, the label "1/2" took a "partial" and made it "whole" ... the label 1/2 made the fraction, "the part", an entity, a "whole" in and of itself... something that could stand alone and be recognized as "1/2". If indeed the autistic child had trouble with the processing of the parts making up the whole, as I firmly believed to be the case, it made perfect sense that a "sentence" would only appear as a bunch of incomprehensible "parts".... that until the child was shown the labels to those parts and shown how the parts fit together, that conversation would not come easily. I thought a lot about this issue - how could I make such a young child see the "parts" to a sentence? To show the "parts" to the sentence, I would have to somehow "compartmentalize" the various "parts"... to allow Zachary to see individual parts first, and then to see them come together to make a sentence. So, how do you do that? I came up with an idea... but I must admit, for quite a while, I debated as to which step should actually come first... the labeling of words as nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, etc., or the physical representation of a sentence in compartments to show the "parts of the whole". I had not thought about teaching the concept of a noun, verb, etc. to a 5 year old... and so, I simply decided to go with the concept of "compartmentalizing" the sentence visually for Zachary. I knew Zachary quickly grasped labels and so I felt the "concept" of breaking the sentence down into its parts visually should come first, and the labels to those parts, second. Once the "parts" were "there" visually represented, I could then worry about labeling them accurately later on. Partial labels would be enough for now. As with everything, when it came to working with Zachary, I always went with my instincts as to which way to go. I had figured out a long time ago that the "voice" within me was there for a reason... and mothers, in particular, seemed to have been given a fantastic sense of instinct when it came to caring for their children. The reason I decided to go with visual compartmentalization before providing labels for words (such as nouns, verbs, etc.) was very much in keeping with my theory that the true problem was first and foremost one of processing the parts to the whole... and that once those parts were understood in terms of how they related to the whole, labels would come easily. If my theory was correct, an autistic child would not be able to "label word types" (i.e., a noun, a verb, etc.) until he first saw how the words made up the whole... the sentence... and for the autistic child, the best way to do that, was via a visual representation and compartmentalization of "a sentence". So, how do you put a sentence into "compartments"? Sentence Compartmentalization Via Bubble Graphs The answer was in what I called "bubble graphs". This concept was based on something I myself had learned when I was in 4th grade. I modified the concept to make it more applicable for the autistic - specifically! I did not believe this concept was still taught in schools, but it was a fantastic way to teach the "parts" of a sentence... for any child - autistic or not! Before we get into the concept of bubble graphs, I wanted to emphasize to all parents to read my section on the importance of colors in the life of the autistic child. I believed that colors and shapes added extra elements or "parts" to bubble graphs that further help solidify the "compartmentalization of a sentence" for the autistic child... and as such, I would encourage all parents to make use of colors and shapes if they decided to try this. Note that sentence parts should have the same color and shape. For example all information related to the subject should look the same in terms its shape and color used. This in my opinion, helped to group that sentence part into a whole of its own... apart from the rest of the sentence. As such, I decided to use the following shapes and color codes with Zachary: Red oval = subject info (article, subject, adjective), blue square = verb info (verb, adverb), green rectangle = object of the verb info or object of the preposition (depending on how technical you want to get at this stage – answers who, what, when, where, why, how – here, it was “how” in the sense of, for example, pulling with something verses the “how” you would see as an adverb, such as “pulled slowly”), brown hexagon = preposition info, purple cross = conjunction info. Note: There were two types of bubble graphs presented for each sentence in the examples below… part “a” and part “b”. There was a tendency to move on to “part b” quickly – perhaps simply because these bubble graphs were so much fun to do – but, as with everything in teaching the autistic, I believed the concept presented in “part a” had to be well understood first, before moving on to “part b” and actually trying to “break out” the bubbles for labeling purposes. The key in everything was always to make sure the lowest building blocks were well laid before moving up in terms of going on to the next concept. If the lower building blocks were not properly laid the foundation to teaching language and conversation would not be as strong and as such, I wanted to caution parents against the inherent desire to “move along quickly”. I found I came much better at gauging Zachary’s pace in this area… I did not want to move too slowly (as I had done with labeling), but I did not want to move too quickly either (as I had done with teaching money – see Teaching Money section for more on that and how I think this needs to be taught)! :o) |
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