the
Finding the Words...
When
our kids experience “wordlessness”
Part 2
| H |
Hello everyone, and welcome back to our continuing topic of "wordlessness!" Yes, in spite of all our good efforts, our kids find themselves without words under all types of conditions. And, yes, we routinely help our kids by supporting them in alertness, vocal access, using new language, and finding old language. But, sometimes, none of these strategies seem particularly helpful, and we really don't know what to do. So, we mull things over and bumble along. We all know the feeling: What was that all about? What is she saying? What does he want? Why is she saying that? What should I do next?
As our fall season enters the home stretch, and Thanksgiving is getting closer, I'd like to tell you a story of wordlessness…and thanksgiving. It happened to me, and it involves one of my best friends, Will, who happens to have an ASD label. One day, after I bumbled along for awhile, mulling over Will's modicum of words, I finally realized that he had demonstrated for the umpteenth time how connected we all are, and often, wordlessly, or almost so.
As adults, we are often in the position of having to react to our children's wordlessness with words. It's often up to us to "find the words" to complete the circle of communication, and to spin a child's meaning into words our kids can hear, so they can use them the next time.
We're quite used to many kinds of wordless communication: facial expression, gestures, and timing, for instance. But less-conventional attempts at communication – the kind we often experience with our spectrum kids - aren't always so easy to decipher. You might recall this author going through a lengthy stream of consciousness exercise to get the point of Russel's pithy four-word sentence in Part 1 of this series.
Our story this time illustrates some general principles to help us find the words our children don't have. Will, the subject of the story, is a perceptually-gifted 17-year-old, whom you might remember from previous columns*. That he can hear a whispered conversation in the next room while listening to his favorite music playing right next to him is a clue to understanding this story.
Will does communicate with words, but they are still a preciously-limited commodity. As he continues to develop conventional language forms to replace his old echolalia, Will often supplements his truncated sentences with other modalities, like playing just-the-right song or just-the-right lines on a VHS or DVD player.
Will set up the conversation we're discussing by playing a favorite scene from the Mary Poppins movie, the segment where Uncle Albert and Bert share a joke about the double meaning of "down in the mouth." The expression refers to the down-turned edges of a sad mouth, of course, but Uncle Albert says his grandfather woke up feeling "down in the mouth" after he'd "chewed his pillow to bits." Bert, Uncle Albert…and Will…laugh every time they hear this!
Then Will said, "'Cause you're…," selecting a partial phrase that referred to 'you, Marge Blanc,' a referent that was, at first, lost on me. As part of our language-development program, we share combinations of media regularly, and Will often juxtaposes multiple clues to explain a question or comment he has. We are used to holding Will's verbalization in mental suspension, until it's meaning becomes more clear.
Next, Will began commenting on anger, saying with a deep and growly voice, "Gina angry," "AJ angry," "Meera angry," etc., providing a dramatically-exaggerated "down in the mouth" facial expression to go with the words. Will then said, "'Cause you…,", and again, the point was lost on me. In some kind of adult oblivion, I started to talk about anger, which I thought Will was exploring in those people around him. That Will is the most emotionally-balanced human being I have ever met didn't click with me as I launched into what I thought was a "teachable moment."
I explained how the vocal tone and facial expression Will was portraying might really be more about adult frustration and sense of responsibility than true anger. Finally, a light bulb clicked on in my head, and I played back an unpleasant conversation with our building manager earlier in the day. Yes, I thought she seemed angry at the time, but maybe she wasn't! I stopped my lecture and said, "Oh, Will, you're getting me to say all this, so I can learn from my own words!" I continued, "Our building manager may not have been so much angry as frustrated! I get it. Thank you, Will!!" With that, Will rewound to the funny scene, and we all really laughed this time!
Interestingly, we had never told Will about the incident with the building manager, and it never dawned on me that he might have sensed it, or wanted to talk about my reaction to it…until I "found the words" to talk about it with him!
Certainly your child doesn't have to be as perceptually-gifted as Will for this story to have relevance to you. The more common occurrences of our shared lives with our children include countless incidents of non-verbal happenings that kids catch on to. After all, they can see our facial expressions when we have no idea we're even using them! What might our kids want to share with us, sometimes about us, that they don't yet have the words to express?
We all know we have to play detective with our children. And, sometimes we have to play detective with ourselves too…so that when our kids get us talking, we can pay attention to what we actually say, and, maybe, just maybe, hear our kids' thoughts expressed in the words we say!
Even when our children have just a modicum of words, and even when we are the ones "finding the words" to finish their sentences, our kids really do say "the darndest things!"
Now, let's examine the commonalities in Russel and Will's stories, and pull out the principles involved in "finding the words" our kids don't yet have.
Principle #1 is to stay in the conversation. You are building shared meaning with your child, so make your part add to the whole, rather than simply turning it back to your child with a question. Questions serve a useful purpose, of course, but use them judiciously. Instead, engage in "self-talk" and tell your child what you're thinking. Be yourself, and talk from the heart. Realize that you are modeling language at the same time, so pick language your child can use later.
Principle #2 is to keep thinking. This joint conversation is more about meaning than about the words themselves. What are you feeling? Stay honest, and find words that express that honesty. Our kids are more sophisticated at reading us than we sometimes realize, and they know if we're being real with them.
So, to reiterate the point we made at the end of our last column, sometimes our kids' limited-word communiqués work, sometimes not. It's up to us to "find the words" that make them work! Communication takes two people, and we will be good communication partners when we meet limited language, and even wordlessness, by finding the right words!
* Please see the May – June and November – December 2005 issues
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
September-October 2007
Autism ■ Asperger’s Digest