Hello all,
My name is Leigh and I am a student at Columbia College in Chicago and I am an interdisciplinary major of ASL/English Interpreting and Early Childhood Education. As part of an independent project I am working on this semester I am in need of everyone's thoughts and experience about children who have autism and also use ASL as a way of communication. I work with a 6 yr old boy who is high functioning and verbal so I have taught him some ASL signs and he seemed to really just pick it up. He uses it when he says "please" and "thank you" or when we're talking about trains around us. But because he's verbal we don't use it THAT much so I am asking for your thoughts and/or experience with autism and ASL. Please tell me anything and everything you would like. I am really interested in hearing from parents and people who have autism and may use ASL. If you have any questions please do not hesitate to ask! Thank you for your help, I really appreciate it.
I am a teachers assistant
I am a teachers assistant for a class of 2nd and 3rd graders. Some are verbal but with the few that are not verbal, we do use some ASL. We usually use "stop", "yes/no", "bathroom", "more", "please/thank you".
When I was working in a preschool SDC intense autism program, most of the children were non-verbal. We used ASL in combination with PECS to help the children communicate better. When the child used a certain PEC for their snack or lunch. Our hope was to prompt them to mimic the sign.
Personally, I prefer to use ASL in conjunction with verbal commands to help the children be sure of what is expected of them. I believe that the more opportunity that is given to a child with autism to succeed, the easier it is for them to learn.
I hope this helps you. Good luck!
I am a speech tx in a public
I am a speech tx in a public school autism class...my students vary in age from 4 to 11. I have used simple signs such as "I want", "bathroom", "more", "eat", "sorry", as a way to provide my students with some way to communicate basics while they were learning more involved stuff (such as PECS, and speech). What seems to hold true is that sign stimulates actual language. My kids who were initially signing "give me" were soon signing and saying (or at least approximating) "give me". In my experience (and the speech literature supports this), signing can facilitate verbal communication.
tengo todo el tiempo del
tengo todo el tiempo del mundo
My daughter too: for example she was initially signing "mamma" and soon she started signing and saying ....
My question is: if the child say the word , autonomously but approximately , do we have to correct him or is better no?
My daughter's main problem is that "too much control" degenarate in full confuson......
My son (age 5 now) uses some
My son (age 5 now) uses some gestures to communicate, such as moving his wrist to flap his hand toward himself when he wants something that I have in my hands, like a toy or a drink. Early on, everyone suggested sign language as a great communication tool. The problem was that we had so many tutors and therapists and most of them didn't know more than a few signs. Sign language just didn't get incorporated except for maybe a few things that were eventually faded out, like "all done." For sign language to be TRULY effective, I would have to take a class in it myself and then I would have to REALLY make an effort to use the sign language. For a couple of years, I only had roughly 10 hours per week of time away from my son, so it would have been difficult to fit a sign language class into my schedule with everything else I had to do in my life that I couldn't do easily with my son tagging along (like grocery shopping). Sometimes my son's attention is really hard to get, so it would be an uphill repetitive battle to implement sign language in any real way.
Still, I do find myself talking with my hands more, in an effort to illustrate what I am saying. When I looked into sign language it really struck me that a lot of it was just common sense, essentially a pantomime of the obvious.
I never have taken any
I never have taken any classes in sign language but I was able to learn a few communication words to use in the classroom. There is a wonderful site on line that will help you "see" how to correctly sign a word or phrase...www.ASLPro.com ; this site was recommended to us by a Speech Pathologist and to this day, I still find myself logging on just to remind myself exactly how to sign a particular word.
I don't think that it's too late to help your son learn a few simple signs. It might take a bit of your patience but it's worth it, just so that he is equipped with a few everyday words to help him communicate easier with you.
Thanks! I think that is a
Thanks! I think that is a good point, that if you choose half a dozen words and make a point of starting with ONLY those, you are more likely to succeed and build a vocabulary. That's the way it was with my son's words using PRT (pivotal response teaching). He can say a few words like go, more, juice, done, etc. "More" and "all done" were also some words that we used to also sign. So, I think signing can be reinforcing.
I had found a couple of other ASL dictionary sites as well:
http://commtechlab.msu.edu/Sites/aslweb/browser.htm
http://www.signingsavvy.com