I’m still deciding how much personal information I want to share about my son. The primary reason is because he is a vulnerable adult and I want to keep him safe. So for now, I am going to err on the cautious side. I’ve been referring to him as my son throughout this blog and I will continue to do so for now.
Anyway, my son was born with a rare genetic disorder. He has intellectual delays and gross and fine motor issues.
One of the challenges we face is my son’s language skills. It’s not always easy to understand what he’s saying because he has weak lower jaw muscles. This means he can’t get his mouth and tongue to move with precision to form words. Because of this, it makes it very hard for him to speak words coherently. There are even words he can’t articulate at all. This makes his vocabulary very limited.
My son’s word box
I use the word box as an analogy to explain my son’s language difficulties. If you’re not familiar with a word box, it’s generally used to reinforce vocabulary and spelling words. I’m not sure if they still have word boxes but back in the day, I had many school assignments where the only words I could use were the ones in the word box.
The problem with my son’s word box is that he doesn’t have too many words in there and most of the words are animal names (and sounds) because he loves animals. This isn’t really helpful in everyday living. For example when the doctor asks him how he’s feeling and he responds with “I love dolphins”. Well, that’s neither here nor there and not at all helpful.
For the majority of the time, he likes to use his language to name animals and do animal impersonations. Some of his impressions are pretty good. If I do say so myself. The only problem is he believes he’s actually speaking the animals’ language and not just doing an impersonation. This means he will bark at every dog he sees because he believes he’s communicating with them. The dogs for the most part are confused about why a human is barking at them.
My son’s favorite numbers
He also has about 4 numbers in his word box (although he can count to 100), they are 3, 5, 17, and 45. He’s very particular about how he uses each number. For example, he only uses 3 to reference how many imaginary kids he has because he doesn’t have any kids. The number 5 is reserved for quantity. If you were to ask him how many hot dogs he wants, he will answer with 5. How many slices of pizza? 5. How many cheeseburgers? 5. How many shoes does he have? 5. You ask him a question about quantity, you will always get 5 as an answer.
The number 17 is his age. He’s been 17 for several years now. We’re just happy he’s advanced to 17 because for a while he was telling everyone he was 5.
The number 45 is how much money he has and how many species of animals there are in a specific animal kingdom. He would be correct when he says there are 45 species of dolphins. But he may not be correct when he says there are 45 species of horses. Neither does he has $45 dollars, no matter what he says.
What am I learning?
Those are my son’s language hurdles. Currently, I’m exploring ways to help him communicate more effectively. I’m curious to know what programs or AAC devices have helped your child communicate?