A
picture says a thousand words. Yes, that is very true in the case of
my son. Being a visual thinker he can understand anything very easily
if it is in the form of picture.
Here
I want to say an interesting story which happened when he was 2 years
old. One day when we took him out for some shopping, he was playing
near the parking lot. Suddenly he went near to a shop, looked up and
saw something, then ran towards a nearby sign board on the platform
and looked it up. The running became like a loop. We parents were
little confused and not able to understand what exactly he was
interested in. So we followed him and found that the nearby sign
board also had the name of the same shop he was running to. He has
been comparing the sign board on the platform with the board above
the shop, as the same brand names in same styles were present in both
places. This was before he knew to read any alphabets or speak.
Today
I teach him everything by matching pictures even after he started to
verbalize. However when we started it was challenging. Using
pictures for communication would mean he has to request for something
by giving a picture, for e.g. give milk picture (picture of milk in a
sipper) to get milk. Initially this was little difficult and he was
not able to get it easily. I will now go into full details of how I
made it happen.
Again
I listed down his interests. E.g. visiting shopping mall, drinking
milk etc… I found he needs milk immediately after he got up from
the bed. So I put a milk picture card near his pillow. Around his
waking time one of us would be near to him and other person would be
in the kitchen with milk ready. Once he got up I gave him the picture
card without saying anything and made him to walk straight to kitchen
and made him to give it to his dad. His dad would immediately give
the milk sipper to him and he would walk away happily. We did this
for some days like ritual hoping he could understand the concept one
day.
I
also made some picture cards of his interest like snacks, water, Mc
Donalds, Shopping mall, park etc. and put it in places where he can
access easily(like sticking pictures with Velcro in Fridge doors).
One evening suddenly he rushed to the place of picture cards and
handed over a picture to us. To our surprise it was Mc Donalds
picture. Immediately we rushed him to Mc Donalds as a reward. When we
shared to the experience to our speech therapist, she was delighted
with our son’s progress and appreciated our effort to immediately
reward him. She said you could have run even in your night dress. It
was worth it. Yes that was true
Also
soon he started using the milk picture card for requesting milk
Before
he started to verbalize I used pictures for communication a lot with
my son. Initially if we took him to places like park, shopping mall
he was not able to associate it with picture. So I took photos of the
particular place and used it as picture card. Before we start from
home I showed him the picture card (say Park Picture) and tell him
“Park”. I did not speak big sentences like “we are going to
park”. This was to ensure he did not get confused with too many
words and focused only on the key word “Park”.
Once
I reached the park also I flashed the picture card once again and
said “Park”. Like the milk and park examples, I used different
approaches for different situations.
Pictures
have been the wonderful first step in my son’s communication. Other
babies communicate to mothers from the time they are born by crying
for milk, food, experimenting little words as they grow up etc. But
we missed all these phases for my son. But because his strength was
visual, I got that phase again as he tried to communicate as much as
possible with pictures. I had a huge list of photographs and
pictures which were generally from his interest areas and he happily
started using these to tell us what he wanted. Soon I was able to
tap this picture communication to speech as well.
Tips
- Keep a set of pictures in your handbag, child’s bag, in your vehicle etc.
- I initially used photographs
- I faded out those pictures where he became comfortable with words. So no problem for generalization
- You can even have a set of pictures in your mobile.
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Here is the link to the playlist of Activities done with Aakash, in YouTube: Click HerePlease click the following link for a comprehensive documentation of my journey with Aakash: Click Here
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