Communication is Not One Size Fits All
One of the greatest joys in speech pathology is working with children and families to support communication through unique methods and means that match their goals and their specific needs. Sometimes, that means sharing weeks, months, even years working together to give a child a method of sharing their thoughts, wants, and needs when their body isn’t allowing them to do so in a traditional fashion – when their brain is bursting with opinions and ideas, and their voice isn’t able to share them. Sometimes, this means working through a child’s frustration, fatigue, lengthy insurance processes, starting and restarting, problem solving, and collaborating to get it right. And it is so worth it!
Meet Adalyn
Meet Adalyn, a 9 year old firecracker that I have had the pleasure of working with for the last 5 years. Adalyn has a variety of medical complexities, and when we started together, she had tried many methods of communication that just weren’t fitting. We introduced eye-gaze and with lots of hard work, we’re learning so much about Addie’s ideas and personality. Early in therapy, there was often discussion of how to get her motivated. What was going to make Addie tick? How could we captivate her attention in therapy? I’m sure we got it wrong 1000 times. I’m certain she wants to yell at us to figure it out, get her the different toy, use a different color. She surely showed me, with many, many eye rolls – sometimes even pretending to be asleep to dismiss me and her distaste for what I had brought.
Eye Gaze Communication
But slowly, Addie let us in, learning to navigate her eye gaze to make choices, accept and reject activities, and let her personality shine. By using multimodal communication, Adalyn is able to use her eye gaze device, body language, modified sign language, and facial expressions to share her world.
She loves chocolate and snacks. She was a mermaid for Halloween. Addie is a total Swifty, but loves some Katy Perry too. She will turn the volume up and up and up to drown out any other work she is supposed to do. She loves to get her hair done and has her dad sending ideas to me so that I can get it right the next week. Addie can participate with her homework to tell her class about her hair tinsel of five colors – because it is “not boring”. She takes turns playing games and tells me she’s done, but certainly not ready to go exercise in physical therapy next.
Adalyn’s communication methods are not traditional. Eye gaze takes a lot of work, coordination, and customization. She is an excellent example of our job as SLPs to match our approaches to the specific child and their needs. I am lucky to be on her team.
Mosaic is unique to have a handful of AAC specialists. They support the evaluation, funding, and support of multimodal communication methods and devices for all ages. We believe in giving everyone access to their voice. We use the support of our physical and occupational therapists to target appropriate access methods, mounting, and motor skills to support communication.