RE: Kids w/ Classic Autism, PDD-NOS & Speech Delays

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He looks like he's in character, lol!

Very cute kid. It amazes me how clearly they can sometimes sing songs vs. how much trouble they have saying a sentence. Mine uses his Dad's (acoustic) guitar as a percussion instrument too, he used to hammer the strings with a kiddie drum mallet I think, it's been a while since I've seen him do it. His grandfather got him a ukelele so whenever he plays with that we call him "El Kabong" ... his other grandfather got him a half-sized guitar too, but it's still too big for him. He also broke the neck on his Dad's electric guitar (knocked it over by accident), but I think that was Dad's fault for leaving it out on a floor display.

I have to keep my instruments in the closet or else the kids will get to them. He's tried to pick up my bass which is way bigger than he is!

He can actually speak much better now than when this video was taken, he doesn't do that gibberish/jargon thing too much any more.

http://www.brainpopesl.com/

The above site, part of brainpop.com, offers animated ESL for children. There is a five day free trial, and a yearly subscription costs $ 85.

There is a closed captioning button that the child can select, which will greatly help with understanding for many kids with limited speech who can read a little. (We always use closed captioning when available to enhance understanding and improve reading fluency and spelling.)

The lessons are very basic and would work for some kids with ASD. I thought that I'd pass it along.

http://www.abcmouse.com/

I found the above site, which I really like for younger children. It is $ 7.95/mo. for preschool to kindergarten animated online curriculum with games and audio. Many of the lessons would be helpful for speech.

I have included it in both "homeschool links" and "speech links" on my website, www.freevideosforautistickids.com.

http://kindersay.com/

The above website has free video lessons for babies, toddlers, and older kids who are speech delayed. You pick whatever vocabulary category that you want the child to study and then select the button for playing the entire category. I have it listed on my free website in the "speech links" section.

I keep running across interesting things as I search for materials for my kids and my website.

Hello

Thanks for the links.

I wanted to ask a question, I hope this is not to similar to something I have asked before.

Basically, my son does not seem to have much in the way of receptive language. What I mean is, he does not seem to understand anything he is told. Just a very very few things. For example if I say "Ice cream" he will come running. But in most cases he just ignores us and runs around.

Blondeambition, was your older son like this at any point?

We know another kid with a language delay but he completely seems to understand what his parents say. It is very different from my son.

Yes, he was. When he was first tested by a speech pathologist at age 3 years 4 months, he was at the bottom 1% across the board. Granted, he had not yet started anti-anxiety meds, and he could have been anxious during the test.

However, he really was not solid in the way of receptive speech at all until he was about 3. Fortunately, I have always used a lot of gestures and have always been pretty good at reading his body language and understanding the way that he thinks.

To really figure out what your son knows regarding receptive speech, I would get a whole bunch of flashcards or a picture dictionary and see if he can point to the objects you say.

Like I have said, my older son has pretty much needed to be taught every word, every question form, every sentence form, etc. I literally did speech, alphabet, and preschool videos with him all day whenever we were at home and I was not working with him. Videos and software are 100% effective with receptive speech, when you are just trying to achieve communication, not social/pragmatic speech.

I worked with him at least two hours a day on speech until he started talking pretty well. Now, we are mainly focusing on reading and writing improvement--kids move along rapidly in second grade, and he struggles to keep up.

I have always used text along with speech--closed captioning whenever available--so that my older son could learn to sight word read and spell at the same time.

Now, he speaks pretty well, but he still prefers to have the closed captioning on, and it helps him to learn academic information much better and faster.

I have always used flashcards, picture dictionaries, simple picture books, and homemade picture books and flashcards when working on expressive speech. (I included a couple of examples of these items on my website, www.freevideosforautistickids.com on the "speech links" page.)

Scholastic.com, ebay, amazon.com, the teacher supply stores listed on the "autism links" and "homeschool links" pages are great places to get flashcards.

difflearn.com has an online catalog and just sells autism stuff.

I just added some new speech online programs and software today to the website, by the way.

The stuff on the website--I tried to look for items that were cost effective and convenient. That is what I like myself. I look on my own website for information because I cannot remember all of the websites that I found and placed on the website, www.freevideosforautistickids.com.

Never worry about asking me to repeat something.

Thanks. This is basically what he cannot do. He can answer questions like "What is it" when he wants to but he has never done what you describe.

Is there anything we can do to help him?

Wreck-Gar, if he is like my older son, there is a lot that you can do to help him.

My older son basically thinks in pictures, he has problems with information retrieval (difficulty in retrieving information and it often comes back disorganized if it was presented verbally), and his short-term memory is not great.

Basically, with my older son, the keys are:
repetition
visual aids
presenting things simply

He learns best if he has a visual aid, text, and auditory at the same time. The visual aid, text, and auditory should match. The same lesson should be repeated several times.

This is my younger son's preferred learning style, too. However, he can pick up a little more on his own.

Basically, my older son's language is pictures. The key is to get him to associate the pictures with the spoken word and text. (Think English as a Second Language with a lot of visual aids and repetition, not social communication, which is a more advanced skill.)

We basically have a language-learning library at home, with every flashcard that I could find (all with pictures and text), homemade flashcards, homemade books, picture dictionaries for children, picture dictionaries for ESL, speech videos for speech delay, speech videos for ESL, preschool videos, picture books with clearly written text, all the Disney videos (watched with closed captioning), Disney books with my own text put in them, etc.

I have some homemade items in the "uploads" on my Speech Channel. We have many more that were never made into slide shows.

Reading is also very important, and he needs to be working on that at the same time--alphabet videos (like on my Reading Channel), the resources above, and the ebooks listed on my website, especially mightybookjr.com and tumblebooks.com (see the website on how to access for free).

Anyway, with my older son, he can learn. However, the process is not fast, and I do have to spend money on supplies. Making everything myself would be too time consuming, and my son likes variety anyway.

Seriously, I would check out the "speech links" and "autism links" on my free website, www.freevideosforautistickids.com, and don't forget the resources on my free Speech and Vocabulary Channel and Reading and Grammar Channel.

There is no quick fix, but I have gathered together a whole lot of helpful resources and information.

Ok thanks for the advice. I really appreciate it.

I noticed that my son really likes sign language but he uses it randomly, just like spoken words. So maybe he is a visual thinker, too.

He just doesn't seem to get the point of communication, except when he wants something...

BTW we did actually add a couple of your videos to the playlists we show my son.

My son is just starting to be able to put letters together into words, so we will keep up with the text with whatever we show him.

Ok I tried this with a picture dictionary. This is what happened. I said "Where is the elephant?" And he would say "elephant" and make eye contact with the picture. No actual pointing but he never really does that much.

He only did this for the words he knows well and really likes.

I do this also but I ask "what is it?" or "who's that person?" showing the picture.

How are your kids with life skills? Yesterday my son turned on the faucet in the bathroom and poured himself a glass of water. I was really surprised because I never showed him how to do that. He didn't even make a mess, though he didn't turn the faucet OFF.

In other news, right now he is eating a piece of broccoli.

Ah life skills. One of my son's few skills was taking off his socks. I offered him an M&M the other day for taking off his shoes and putting them neatly under the hall table (I thought I was joking, he has never even attempted taking his shoes off before) and he did it! So now we suspect our problem with self care stuff is motivation rather than capability. But I can't bear to have him eat M&Ms all day so we haven't got any further.

I dream of him eating broccoli! His single vegetable is cucumber, although he did eat about a quarter of a carrot last week.