Rachel R. Romeo
@RachelRRomeo
I just had such an affirming experience. On my 8 hour international flight back from a conference, I sat next to a father and son. In broken English, the father began to apologize and warn me that ~10 year-old son had severe nonverbal autism, and that this would likely be a difficult journey.
I told him not to worry, I was a speech-language pathologist with lots of experience with minimally verbal kiddos. Challenging behaviors began even before take off: screaming, hitting me, and grabbing for my things. The father repeatedly apologized, but did little else.
I asked him how his son preferred to communicate. He didn’t seem to understand. Perhaps this was a language barrier, but I think instead the child had very little experience with communication therapy. I put away the talk I was working on & asked if I could try. He nodded.
I tried to see if he was stimulable for a communication board. I started pulling up some standard images for basic nouns on my computer but I could tell that screens really bothered him. So I summoned my god-awful drawing skills and tried to create a (very!) low-tech board.
And by god, it clicked. I made symbols for the things he was grabbing, for his favorite stuffed penguin, and for his dad. He took to it very quickly. I introduced way more symbols than I normally would, but hey, how often do we get an 8-hour session?!
But the end of the flight, he made several requests, initiated several times, & his behaviors had reduced quite a bit. The father was astounded - clearly no one had ever tried an AAC (assistive and augmentative communication) approach with him. I gave him the paper & showed him how to use it, and he nearly cried.
This was the human desire for communication, pure and simple. To connect with another person and share a thought. Communication is a basic human right, and I was overjoyed to help someone find it. What a privilege and a gift.
As I face the upcoming job cycle and the nearly endless impostor syndrome of academia, this was precisely the reminder I needed about why I love studying language/communication development. I was a good day to be an #SLP (speech and language pathologist)!
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