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                                  Finding the Words...
                                               When our kids experience “wordlessness” Part 1
                                                                                                  

Hello, dear reader! And welcome back from the "never never land" that was summer. If it feels like reality is starting to creep back into your family's consciousness, you are definitely not alone. It is natural to yearn for even that single "day at the beach," the one that offered moments of peace for you and your family, when regulation issues disappeared with the tide and there were moments when no one needed any words at all. Life seemed like it was meant to be experienced on it's own terms. There really are no words for "bliss" - not really… 

Our new topic is wordlessness, a departure from our other topics to date: language development, speech access, language retrieval, but just as vital to the fabric of the communication we share with our children. 

Some of life's experiences just don't come with words…or very many of them. If we've learned anything from Temple Grandin, it is that perceptions come in many forms - elaborate visualizations, olfactory cornucopia, feelings of fight and flight and everything in between - and that words can change, mask, diminish, and even inhibit many of them. Think about some of our most profound feelings, the ones we call love, peace, or hope, for example, and how we struggle to explain their essences in prose and poetry. We try with wedding vows, greeting cards, and graduation addresses, but our deepest feelings often find their truest expression in a kiss, a sigh, a smile. 

Now consider our children's' emotions, and how even sophisticated adult language fails to capture the heart of being "lost," the state our kids so often live in. I've pondered to myself, "…then what would 'found' feel like?" Are there words to express our kids' feelings at the height of optimal regulation, or in the depths of a meltdown?   

Even when there are words, they don't necessarily explain anything. In fact, they may not even tell a story, or offer an opinion. Rather, like dance, or nature, or art, or laughter, they work their magic by evoking a similar feeling in the listener.  

Amy Tan, celebrated author of The Joy Luck Club, describes in one of her more well-known essays, "Mother Tongue" how she grew up as a Chinese-American with many forms of English around her. She says that as she tried to write about her mother, she used "all the Englishes I grew up with," the "simple" English she spoke to her mother, the "broken" English her mother spoke, the "watered-down" Chinese she understood, and the "internal language" she imagined her mother to have. Ms Tan notes, "I wanted to capture what language ability tests can never reveal: her intent, her passion, her imagery, the rhythms of her speech and the nature of her thoughts." 

Another novelist, and mother of a boy on the spectrum, Cammie McGovern, offers another example in one of her popular articles, "The Silent Language of Love: Life With Autism.” Reflecting on a moment of unspoken connection between her 10-year-old son and a girl in his class, Ms McGovern writes, "We have learned that silence is a cloud with its own silver lining. What Ethan manages to communicate in his odd ways, in his gestures, in holding hands with that girl, in his morning hugs can seem at times truer than a half-hour of his brother's nightly laments about playground popularity… Sometimes I think that in the absence of easy access to words, there's a way he says the real things better than the rest of us." 

So, back to the world of words, Marge! You're an SLP, writing a column about "finding words," about the pragmatics of developing language, and accessing speech. Get real! 

Breakout quote: The realm between words and wordlessness is a part of my everyday life, as I'm sure it is yours. 

I am. Believe me. The realm between words and wordlessness is a part of my everyday life, as I'm sure it is yours.  It's just that I may have a wider breadth of experience that may help. 

Take last spring for example. My young friend, Russel, whom you may remember from a previous Digest column* used an uncharacteristically-simple phrase when he said to me, "Bye bye, Door County." For those of you who are not from the Midwest: Door County is a real place, the "thumb" of Wisconsin that juts out into Lake Michigan, and a lovely vacation spot. Russel and his family, along with one of my fellow SLPs and I, spent three wonderful days there two summers ago. That Russel was bidding "bye bye" when we were planning a rendezvous in a few months seemed strange.  So, I queried, "Bye bye, Door County?" and in the silence that followed, continued with the train of thought this triggered in me. 

I pondered what Russel might have meant by this, and ventured a guess, "Don't worry, buddy. I'm sure we'll find a date that works for everybody." Adequately prompted by their boy, I called Russel's parents later that day to find out if they'd expressed some discouragement about finding a date, especially within earshot of Russel. To my surprise, they said, "Oh, I thought we'd agreed on June 23." I said, "No, I thought you knew June wouldn't work for me, and that you were working on another date." They said, "No, we've been getting everything set for the weekend of June 23." Whew! That communication ever works at all is  a miracle! 

And, for kids, it's even more miraculous! For Russel to explain that he was worried about confusion in the ranks would have required more language skills than he currently has. His language development is coming along nicely, and when he has some visuals to reference, it can be flawless. But in the realm of the invisible (like miscommunication among the adults around him, and the resulting kafuffle), his language doesn't have a prayer. 

It was at this point in my own thinking, though, that I could see what Russel's comment was meant to do…what he meant for me to do!  It was not the literal meaning itself that was so important to Russel. It was what Russel could evoke in me that made the communication work.  

Russel clearly knew me well! With a modicum of words, he could trigger a reaction in me, one that would get me thinking, thinking about what he wanted me to think!  It was for the effect that Russel used the phrase, "Bye bye, Door County!" He used a combination of "Englishes" to trigger my next move. His simple phrase spoke volumes, or at least got me to speak volumes. The incongruous mental picture I had of Russel waving bye bye to his favorite place on the planet was "worth a thousand words," which is about what it took me to tell you this story! 

Russel has worked this kind of magic several times since, as have some other gifted thinkers I know. So, in the columns to come, let's do this again. Let's examine some other places of wordlessness, or near-wordlessness, other junctures of self that coalesce at moments of brilliant self-expression. Sometimes they work, sometimes not. But, here's the point: It's we who make them work…and it's we who have to "find the words" this time. Communication depends on two people. This is the part we play when we meet the "silent cloud" of wordlessness. 

                                                                           
Marge Blanc founded the Communication Development Center, in Madison, WI 10 years ago.  Specializing in physically-supported speech and language services for children with ASD diagnoses, CDC has successfully helped scores of children as they moved through the stages of language acquisition.  Contact Marge and her associates at:
 

Communication Development Center
700 Rayovac Drive, Suite 200
Madison, WI 53711
lyonblanc@aol.com
 

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September-October 2007 Autism ■ Asperger’s Digest