Robin Hurd

Advice to Parents New to AAC

by Robin Hurd

How do I get my child’s AAC system into our everyday lives? It sounds like a simple question, until you are living firsthand the life of a parent with a special needs child. It’s not just the AAC system we have to deal with. It may also be any number of the following: feeding tubes, autistic spectrum disorder, behaviors that cause the bravest of us to shiver, fragile health of our child that has us recognized by sight when we enter the emergency room, along with financial pressures and school issues that can wear us out.

So how do we add one more thing into our already busy lives? It may seem overwhelming at first, when both you and your child are new to AAC. Start by finding times within your current routine when you add the AAC system, and continue adding it bit by bit so that your child can communicate everything he or she wants to.

For us, when we first got Josh and Caleb their Pathfinders, we made time for two kinds of interaction: exploratory (playing with the machine to see what you can do) and more structured (tell me what I need to know).

Exploratory time worked well after supper, when tummies were full and there was a lull before the bedtime routine began. The boys sat on the floor with their devices and talked while I helped the older kids with homework, cleaned up the kitchen, etc. As I worked, I responded to anything that sounded like it needed a response. If I heard, ”How are you?”, I called out ”I’m fine, how are you?” from the kitchen. If I heard a lot of vocalizing, I peeked in to see was up. During our first few weeks of having the Pathfinder at home, one of the boys overheard their older brother, Wesley, complain that he couldn’t find the right word for his homework. He began to vocalize to get Wesley’s attention, then showed Wesley the word he was looking for on the Pathfinder! No one had taught him that word. He found it by exploring his new device.

More structured times can take place as a child requests food, works on homework, or has a need to tell you how he or she is feeling (without screaming and throwing a fit). Structured times can also include having the AAC system handy to talk about a story you are reading out loud and having face-to-face time to practice having a conversation. You as a parent can prioritize these different types of structured interactions, to decide what to work on first. For many children, food is a big item to talk about. Being able to tell people what you want to eat for the first time can feel pretty powerful! At our house, talking about feelings is a big emphasis, so we very quickly began to find the feeling words and use them to describe how we, or the characters in the story, or our brothers, were feeling. Before too long, this turned into tattling. “John angry. Bedroom.” (Translation: Send my brother to his room. He is shouting.) Or, “Mrs.---- angry Joshua.” (Translation: Josh got in trouble with the teacher today.)

One way I incorporated structured times into our lives was by getting in the habit of giving the boys their Pathfinders after lunch (they were in preschool then), asking about their day at school, then reading a story and asking them questions about it which they could answer on their AAC systems. At this time, I was able to also help the boys find a new word to help make their meaning more clear, or spend the time I needed asking questions to get to completely understand what they were trying to say. At first, as you know, your child may string together several words to try to tell you something, but word order and those core words that tie a thought together may be missing. Asking for more explanation, and offering a new word that might help your child make the point is a great way to teach exactly what your child needs to know to communicate better.

The adjustment to AAC can be just that, an adjustment for the whole family. Take it at a comfortable pace, and don’t beat up on yourself if circumstances occasionally prevent face-to-face time with AAC. As your child builds language skills, being a communication partner will become easier on you. And as your child learns the power of words, he or she will want to use the AAC system more and more. Before long, instead of trying to find times to use the AAC system, you will find that you are having to remove the system from use to keep it safe! (In the bathtub is not a good place for a complex VOCA!).

Good luck and keep in touch! parents@aacinstutue.org is the e-mail to let me know what you think.