J has come so far with communication. He tries so hard to let us know what he wants or needs. If we don’t understand, he always tries another way to tell or show us what he’s trying to say. This makes it all the harder to take when we simply cannot work out what he’s trying to ask. There are sometimes when, no matter how hard we try to work it out and no matter how much he perseveres in getting his message across, we simply can’t understand. It’s frustrating for us, so I can’t imagine how frustrating it must be for J.
We have tried many approaches to support communication and help him to share his thoughts and ideas, as well as to develop his understanding and ability to listen. We have read numerous articles, attended courses, gone to meetings and workshops in his school, read books on the topic and tried out several approaches to support and develop how we all communicate. Some have been more successful than others. We have tried many things; More than Words, PECS, photo visuals, routine visuals, speech therapy; too many to mention.
I think this makes it harder to take when we still can’t meet his needs because we can’t understand what he is asking. As J gets bigger, his frustration is shown in different ways too. Sometimes he can react well and just move on to something else. At other times, he becomes distressed and cries. On a few occasions he has thrown things or tried to hit. This worries me. He’s not normally violent and we have counted ourselves lucky that this is the case. I really hope that this doesn’t change.
So, what’s the point of this post? I suppose I’m thinking out loud a little and also hoping someone might have experience of this and a successful way of tackling it. If there’s anything we haven’t tried already, which could help us understand when we run out of things to try, we would be willing to give it a try. All suggestions welcome.
Upside Mum 