To 'Low-functioning' Autistics:

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on the subject of FC,an idiot of a support staff once made a mockery of it at the last residential home was living in.
the other lady living there was profoundly autistic and completely non verbal [though she spoke full sentances in her sleep as had heard her through the above bedroom ceiling] she made no attempt to communicate with people because she had always had her communication needs met by everyone without her having to do anything so of course it woud cause anxiety and her to fight change.
so,one of the support staff;who [cannot say this enough] was a total dik,had been complaining about making the lunch as usual and was unable to escape to the office like he usualy did to avoid being the lunch maker.
he sat down with [a] and did FC with her holding a pen in her hand,it turned out he wrote 'i want fish and chips',and said to the other staff 'look what [a] has just wrote,we cant say no to her requests,they went out and got a fish and chips dinner in.

I know someone non-verbal with severe autism and when they did FC, they typed a bunch of curse words and false things about family members.

I saw video of a child doing FC for the first time, and he typed things using words like "poignant", and it took a long time for him to type things, because he kept stopping and not wanting to do this meaningless activity of the facilitator moving his hand around the keyboard, but the facilitator kept forcing him to do it, telling him to "finish the thought", her thoughts, it was really disgusting what she was doing.

A lot of parents of non-verbal kids or teens will seriously consider FC and take it seriously regardless of the unbelievable results from it, like a child learning to type complex social-emotional thoughts right away, and the child seeming to have learned so much stuff without any education beyond ABA and the special ed classroom where little real education in academic subjects occurs. FC is the best way of preventing them from truly learning to communicate or gain knowledge + cognition which they can gain with the right help, since they appear to know so much already that there is no need to teach them the basics and have them learn something.

I am also suspicious of any kind of communication in which a person points to letters on a board that is held (and moved) by someone rather than flat on a surface, that is like getting a ouija board to say whatever you want it to say.

There is some workshop that runs a FC thing regularly in SoCal, and I always wanted to do a sting operation on them with me as a "communicator" and see what I say when I do FC.

I am very glad to find this thraad and especially the feedback by Bunny (who I respect very much). It seems almost an eerie coincidence as I have been looking into Rapid Prompting Method (RPM) for my son. I think I got my answer about RPM already, so I won't even bother starting a thread about it.

It is very disappointing though because I recently met a few people out here who are doing RPM with their kids and who are claiming stunning results. One Mom with a 10-yr-old son told me that her son has been asking her about things like race horses and riding stables, telling Mom how glad he is to finally be able to "talk" to her, and how he is finally doing grade level academic work, after being stuck at the kindergarten level for so long ! Another one with a nonverbal 8-yr-old told me that her son is doing multiplication on his own. Multiplication ... and asking about his grandparents who are in the middle of a messy divorce after decades of marriage. I mean, the stories are awe-inspiring and very hopeful..the thing is that in RPM, the parents help the kids communicate, so I doubt that they would be scamming themselves. More probably, they are speaking on behalf of the kids, while convincing THEMSELVES and others to the contrary. Which parent with a child on the spectrum wouldn't love to have their kids communicate, especially about things such as their grandparents' divorce and race horses ?

Oh, well. At least this thread saved me a bunch of $$$$.

Improving communication between parent and autistic child is definitely a function of a speech/language therapist. Some autistic kids find that it is easier to communicate with photos or pictograms, sign language, picture-cards, or makeshift things like grabbing someone's hand and leading them to the object of interest. And once they know one kind of communication it is easier to learn others (for example, pictograms can be a step to reading, sign, or speech).

Kids who communicate in text or by VOCA may need an assistant to help them break perseveration, redirect their attention when it wanders, etc. This is different from FC, but contamination of the message can still occur.

I think that it's just going to be a process of learning a new skill, probably slow and steady. Start with the principle of cause and effect, which your son probably already knows, and arrange for situations where he can see, "If I do this thing, the other person does that thing." Language is a thing that you can do to get other people to reply in certain ways. I don't know if he understands others' mental states yet, but that's the goal, to teach him, "If I do [say] this thing, then the other person's mental state will be influenced." More immediately, functional language can be used to ask for help, communicate frustration, express choices and preferences, and show interesting things to other people.

Your son seems to be making progress, HisMom.

Oh, hon, don't worry so much. He has the one thing a child really needs--parents who love him. Being disabled can be difficult, but it won't stop him from being happy, having a meaningful life, loving and being loved. I know you probably feel like you have to be momma bear, protecting him from the world, and that's okay--but don't spend all your energy on guarding him and fighting the world. Just enjoy being his mom. Kids grow up so fast.

I just read your signature for the first time Hismom. I LOVE it. I will tell myself that often.

I'm happy for the positivity.

_________________
Unapologetically, Norny.
-chronically drunk