Communication Revisited: Or, How I Taught a Kid to Talk

I was hired as a one-on-one for my little guy, LG, back in April. He needs the extra support because not only is he autistic, but he may also have other mental health issues, as evidenced by the manic fits he will have a few times a week where he runs around the classroom screaming, jumping up and down, flapping, and laughing hysterically. When I was first hired, he was in a mental health classroom for otherwise-normal kids with severe emotional issues. I spent a week in this particular classroom with him before he was transferred back to his original autistic support classroom, dragging me along with him.

LG is non-verbal, and when I first met him, he had exactly two signs for expressing himself - marshmallow and bathroom. He didn't consistently use these two signs, and would usually just grab my marshmallows or randomly run out of the gym to use the bathroom. He couldn't tell you if he was tired, hungry, sick, bored, annoyed (well, I guess he could punch and kick...), too cold, too hot, wanted a snack, wanted a different puzzle, wanted to watch a movie, and on and on and on. So he pretty much ran around the classroom grabbing various things, crying, screaming, and being aggressive. I felt very bad for him, and my bruises were increasing exponentially by the hour.

Remember this post, where I taught a kid in summer school how to request snack foods he liked, and how it generally helped him to calm down and not punch me in the stomach all day? Well, once we moved over to our current classroom, the first thing I said after saying hi was "LG needs some PECS, pronto. Do you have any?" And yes, this being an autistic support classroom, they had a box full of PECS (PECS are small cards about one inch by one inch labeled with pictures of various items - if a child wants something, he can just give you the picture of the item, which he understands and you understand). Even though he had been in this classroom for most of the year, PECS hadn't really been tried with him, possibly due to his punching and kicking all the time, or possibly due to all of the other kids punching and kicking all the time and focusing staff's attention on safety, not PECS. LG had already learned the PECS for bathroom and help.

So I went over to the PECS box and filled up three pages with illustrations of just about anything I could think of that LG might want. I might have overdone it just a little ("Dude, Grace," said the teacher, "He doesn't even know what half of these things are.").

I worked on the PECS for the stuff LG likes the best to start. His main focus in life is completing puzzles and then carefully putting away each piece in the box so that all pieces are face up and absolutely no cardboard bottom is visible, so we worked with the picture for puzzle. When LG wanted a puzzle (which was about 6,783 times per day), he had to give me the PEC for puzzle. If he didn't, there was no puzzle. Even though LG is nonverbal, there are certain areas where he catches on pretty quick, and this was something that he caught on to pretty quick. By the end of the week, he knew that the quickest, most efficient way of getting that puzzle was to give me the puzzle picture. Once he seemed to get the idea, we worked on marshmallow, yogurt, and cantaloupe (the latter two items are what he eats for lunch every. single. day.). He got that right away, too.

Then something pretty much amazing happened.

Most kids with autism are pretty slow with learning the PECS system. In the traditional method (which I, as a trained non-speech therapist, did not follow), a student learns how to ask for just one item with just one available PEC. Then the child learns how to ask for something out of a field of two PECS, then three, then four, etc. It's a long, involved process that can take years for a cognitively impaired person to understand.

Not LG, however.

One afternoon, LG was throwing a fit. He was being a pain in the rear end, and I was trying to lay down the law and make him sit at his desk and show me quiet sitting before he went to pack up. He was punching and kicking and wiggling his fingers in my face and saying DEE DEE DEE DEE DEE with enough emphasis to let me know that he was really, really not happy with having to wait for the bus. Suddenly, he stopped attempting to bruise my ribs, jumped up, and ran across the room. I assumed that he was headed for the table or a desk or somewhere he could crawl under and further demonstrate that he was really, really, really unhappy with me, so I ran after him. But he didn't try to do that. Instead, he ran towards one of the other student's visual PECS schedule hanging on a wall, a schedule that I didn't think he had ever noticed before. He pulled off a PEC and pretty much threw it at my hand.

It was a picture of a backpack.

I almost cried. Then I forgave LG for the twenty-minute pinching session and let him go get packed up.

It was a huge communication breakthrough. LG had realized that he express himself through PECS. He had learned to talk.

In the next few weeks, it became increasingly clear that the only thing holding LG back from expressing himself was the number of PECS that we could give him. Most kids in our classrooms who used PECS were able to choose a picture of a favorite item out of a field of two. LG could flip through three pages of PECS with fifteen PECS each and pull out the picture of whatever he needed. Amazingly, something in his brain was able to make the connection between sometimes-abstract pictures and communication. Some kids need to be taught each PEC individually. LG could pick out a picture of something he had never seen before or had never needed before and communicate accordingly.

These days, it sometimes feels like my job can be a little boring. LG doesn't sleep well, so he's often a grumpy, crabby kid who hits you on the arm if you tell him no, you can't have snack at 8:15 in the morning, but overall, he's not really that much of a problem. He doesn't have to hit me to communicate. What do you want, LG?

He flips through his book and pulls out a picture of a shoe.

Alright, I say, I'll tie your shoes.

I tie his shoes.

He flips through his book and pulls out another picture. Can he play?

Sure, do you want Mr. Potato Head or Legos?

He points to Mr. Potato Head. He works on making an impressively genetically mutated Mr. Potato Head for twenty minutes. Seriously, it looks like Mr. Potato Head was the victim of an unfortunate disaster at a nuclear reactor. He has two arms on the right side of his body and a nose growing out of the top of his head.

After a while, he gives me yet another picture. He's mercifully all done with Mr. Potato Head, the poor spud.

Yay, you finished up just in time, LG! The bus will be here soon.

Then he asks to go to his locker. He packs up and goes home to annoy his parents with his excited shrieking at the sight of movie credits.

Maybe I'm a boring Plain Jane and careening right down the path of short and fat. But I unlocked someone's world. How many people, dumpy or not, can boast of that?