Finding Z's Voice

*Heads up this is a long one, grab a cuppa! I'll divide this into sections so you can scroll through*

There was a time not long ago that I thought I might never hear my son talk. He couldn't form words to tell me anything. He couldn't call me 'mum' or tell me if he was ok. If he was poorly he couldn't tell me what hurt, or if something had upset him. My boy had the sweetest little voice but there were no words, just sounds. His only form of expression was 'diddle, diddle, diddle' his happy, excited and frustrated noise. 

I'm so lucky that he's making progress. For so many parents they may never hear their child speak, and many children and adults might not be able to find their voices, that can be pretty hard to accept but it is ok. There are other ways to communicate too. But for now, I wanted to share a few things that helped Z with his speech development so far. There's a long way to go until we can have a clear conversation but I couldn't be prouder of how well he's doing. 

Background

Z's speech was one of my worries when he was just over a year old. He'd started babbling like you'd expect with most babies. He started sounding out words like 'Dadda', 'no', 'hiya' but they didn't last long and every new word he did try would push an old word out. Pretty soon they all went and he just made 'diddle' sounds instead. 

I spoke to my health visitor who said that before Z could be assessed by speech and language that he'd need to get rid of his dummy/soother. He was around 12-18 months at this point and we were so worried about taking this away but we decided to just go cold turkey one night and it was absolutely fine. He wasn't bothered at all! So as advised we gave it a few months and there was no change with speech. I did keep on calling health visitors about this and was always advised that Z was still young and there was time for him to catch up (always reluctant to hand out those referrals). I think a parent's instinct is really important to trust though, I knew it was more than that so I'm glad I carried on calling the HV and Doctor and pushing for a paediatrician. 

Speech and Language Therapy

Prepping for the slide

Z was over 2 years old by the time we got seen by SLT. We would go for an hour appointment once per month. I was advised to work on making eye contact firstly and using that as a prompt (all this was before Z's ASD diagnosis, and if I'd have known then what I know now I'd have probably been a little more reluctant to force eye contact as it can be really uncomfortable for people on the spectrum - however, it doesn't seem to bother Z much, we don't push him to make eye contact all of the time). So we'd play a lot of 'Ready, Steady, Go!' games. For example, Z would climb to the top of a slide, we'd say 'Ready, Steady....' pause and wait for Z to look at us and then say 'GO!' and off he'd slide. It was really awkward at first to stop and wait for so long before the eye contact was made.  He soon picked it up though, knowing that eye contact means go. We'd do the same with blowing bubbles, passing a ball, anything that was fun for Z. It wasn't long before he was making sounds to indicate go. The vocal request didn't need to be a word, just a noise.

We then moved that up to asking for 'more'. Z is a big fan of bubbles so we'd do the whole 'Ready, Steady - pause-  Go!' and blow bubbles. Then we'd stop and ask 'more?' he picked it up so quickly and he'd make eye contact as the request for more. That again soon moved on to a vocal request as he was excited to join in. Over a few weeks/months he started more clearly saying 'go' and 'more'. Eventually he would go on to say the words and use them in different scenarios as well. 

Using simple language

Keeping language really simple was important too, we didn't want to give too much information to overload him with. So we kept it to one word questions or requests. Just 'more?' or a simple choice like 'Yes or no?'. We never worried about manners so 'please' and 'thank you' weren't important, just making a choice was all that mattered. Anything else we could work on much later. 

Keep choices really simple
to avoid information overload

When it came to making choices we would keep it really simple again. Offering visual prompt at the same time. So we'd offer him something like 'Banana or sock?' (we were advised to make it an obvious choice, something he would want and something he wouldn't) and he could point or look at the thing he wanted and we'd repeat the name of the object. Again he'd eventually start to make a vocalisation as he made the choice which was great. Over time this would turn into him saying the word or as close as he could. We'd always celebrate with Z as he responds really well to cheering - this is something very individual though so it might not work for everyone to celebrate and cause a fuss. 

We were also taught that when Z said a word correctly never to say 'good boy' 'well done' or 'thats right' but to just repeat the word again so as to not cause any confusion. This worked really well (although it was hard for us to adjust to at first) as Z loooooves us to repeat words. He'll often say the same thing over and over again until we repeat it back to him.

The daily thing we did was to learn to slow down and simplify how we speak. The normal reaction when someone doesn't understand you is to rephrase what we've said, but instead we used simple language, long pauses (around 10 seconds which feels really long to start with) then repeat the same thing exactly as we said it before, which gives some extra processing time.

Books

Two of the books we modified

A friend of mine found an article written by a speech therapist that had some great advice in. Using a book and velcro so kids could pull out the pictures. For Z we used the book 'Moo, Baa, La La La' by Sandra Boynton. It's a really simple book about animal sounds. We scanned the pictures from each page, printed and laminated them and stuck them back into the book with velcro sticky dots. We would show Z what to do first, as we read the story we'd rip off the pictures, the idea was to post them into a box or stack them up but Z preferred to stick them back into the book. So as we read we'd make the animal

sounds, and rip off the pictures. Z really liked this and has always had a preference for books with some interaction like lifting the flap. Over time he would make the animal sounds with us, and start to name the animals. We did the same thing adapting other books such as naming parts of the body - really useful in helping point to or name parts of the body that might have been hurting.

TV and Tech

I can't forget to mention how tech has helped improve Z's speech as well. I've always felt so guilty over allowing Z to have 'screen time' as there are always constant reminders about how bad it is for children and how we need to limit it. For us though it's been massively helpful for Z's speech development. He absolutely loves watching Twirlywoo's on CBeebies as well as playing the games on computer and his Amazon Kindle Fire kids - he even saw Twirlywoo's live for his third birthday. The simple repetitive language with clear examples of the particular word they're learning about have been great for Z. As he got a little older he also became obsessed with watching Blaze and the Monster Machines learning about numbers and science. There are plenty of other shows he loves but these are the main two he always comes back to. I think as long as your child is getting something out of it and learning without really realising it then there's no harm as long as there's balance. 

There's also plenty of educational apps to use some dedicated to speech development, phonics, letter writing and numbers.

What didn't work

During SLT we tried PECS (Picture Exchange Communication System) which Z never really took to but is amazing for some. We also tried some basic makaton but both of these just seemed like they added in an extra step to communication that he wasn't picking up. There is a lot of trial and error to find what works for your child. Above all it's patience, all of this has taken years to learn for both myself and Z.

Currently

We stopped seeing SLT once lockdown kicked in back in March 2020 and he hasn't been able to see anyone since. However, Z's SEN worker at nursery signed me up to an online Hanen course and I honestly wish I'd known about it earlier. It was great, intuitive and focused on developing communication through play in simple manageable steps. Over lockdown we used some of the techniques combined with what we were already doing and I am amazed by how much Z has improved in this last year alone. He's doing his best to put together some simple sentences, he's always wanted to have conversations and now the words are starting to come together and he's working hard on making them clearer. It's been really hard at times but Z has never given up, he's determined to be able to talk with us and I could not be more proud of him.

Sorry that was such a long one but it has been a really long process and it's still ongoing. There is so much to say about speech development and I hope that some of this has been useful. If you'd like to ask any questions please feel free to get in touch and I'll help if I can or provide more detail (yep, this was the condensed version!).

Sarah x