Should Verbal Children use Communication Devices?
Ming from Agents of Speech questions whether mildly verbal children should use AAC devices like iPads in school, arguing they can cause social stigma and are cumbersome. He supports AAC for teaching sentence structure or as an alternative to devices, and shares a case where teaching gestures improved a child's communication instead.
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Okay, so I get a lot of questions recently about whether the child should use some sort of iPad and a communication device or I always ask more questions so that I know what's going on. So it's becoming a trend, especially in Australia. As far as I'm concerned from all the online consultations and the parents who are in our coaching group is that they're recommending the use of iPad and communication devices with verbal children, which is mind blowing to say the least. Okay, so why is it that they're recommending something like that? You have to understand the reason for using what we call AAC Alternative Augmentative communication device. You can watch those videos on our channel or just go search about AAC and somewhere else. All therapists nearly talk about this thing. The same is because speech is not a means that the child can use to communicate effectively. Right. And therefore we should give them communication device that they can use on a daily basis. But the problem is that is this. The word we need to highlight here is effectively. So the therapist actually recommended the girl to have an iPad at school. So first of all, I don't know what era this is nowadays, but if back in my day when I was a kid, I was holding an iPad and I was pressing buttons to say something like I want to go toilet or whatever, I'd be bullied, man, I'd be laughed at. I'd be whatever. I don't know about other cultures and about the age we are in right now, but just coming from personal experience, if I were a kid, it was a big no, no, I wouldn't like it. And we're talking about like maybe a five or six year old right now. So I think at that age any kid would be pretty self aware. So that's the first point. I don't. I think I want to allow the child to look and seem like everyone else, right? Because everyone's trying to fit in those kind of like younger ages, right? Like one person brings a yo yo, the whole class brings a yo yo. It's a yo yo phenomenon, right? But if you stick out like a sore thumb, you're using like a aac. And then the kids are gonna be like, I also want an iPad, right? Why don't I get an iPad? And then, you know, because of this treatment, this preferential treatment that your kid has, it's going to have, I don't know if we can control the effects of this, right? It might go into bullying. So that's my first point. If your child's like kind of verbal why would you bring a whole iPad to school? What are you going to do, put it around your neck or something? It's too heavy anyways. The therapist was recommending this because she, at the time, the girl wasn't able to communicate effectively to say, I want to go toilet, whatever. And it came out in one word or one sound or sometimes just like with gestures. But at the same time, you see, this is becoming a huge trend. No matter where we are is that, oh, we need to provide a viable way for children to communicate with us. AAC or using a communication device can have a lot of uses and a lot of different ways that we can tap into the potential of that. But bringing it to school as the norm for a child to use it is ineffective in a way, because what are you going to do? You're going to have to unlock the thing, tap on the app. If she presses one button wrong, then she has to like delete everything and go for it again. Right? So going on with this, I do not object that we sometimes we can use like AAC or tablets or pictures or whatever to help children with learning sentence building. So usually when that's the case, then it becomes like sort of a teaching material. So I don't see why therapists would recommend using ac. I'm going to get some backlash here, obviously, because. Because I'm not saying that it's like the worst thing in the world because there's not much things that you can do to screw up therapy, so to say, because all you're doing is adding on to a child's ability, you're not going to diminish their speech ability. Right? Or language ability because it's always going up naturally anyways. And what we're doing is to help a little bit. So I'm not saying that. I'm saying that it's going to make it worse or whatever. That's not never going to happen unless you're abusing the kid, which does happen in some parts of the world, which kind of sucks. But at this, at this moment in time, I think if you're using AAC or communication devices as a teaching material, so to speak, then why not just use normal teaching materials like toys and flashcards and whatnot. Right? So that's part of my point. The second point is that if you are thinking that it's effective for the child to use a communication device to learn what we call communication intention, and this is more for children who are on the spectrum, I think that's fair enough. Because what we're doing? Basically, we're using AAC as a mode of communication, right? So if your child is still verbal or, you know, slightly verbal or whatever, and they find it difficult to initiate speech and it's easier for them to initiate with a communication device, then by all means, fair enough. And they're okay with using it, and they prefer it more than speech. I think it's good, right? And the communication device that AAC serves as a way to teach the different prelinguistic skills, right? Maybe it's matching. It's like taking turns, it's initiating a communication, learning different language functions, answering a question, right? Greeting someone, asking a question even. But if we're going to those higher functional needs, like high language functions, right, Then we don't really need the AAC anymore because AAC really serves the request function, basically. Because if you say, like, oh, what if the child wants to say no? And then what are you going to do? Like press the iPad and press. No, no, they're not going to push you off and they're going to walk off or whatever. And if they want something, the AC is like a meandering way to get what they want, and it's a means to learn language. That's what I mean. Okay, so my last point is, if that's the case, right, if the child isn't on the spectrum, right, and they know how to initiate language, they know how to look at you and get your attention, whatnot, then why not teach some sign language or some gestures that can, like, help and can add a little meaning to this speech that's lacking, right? We have a coaching parent client thing that the child had like, some. Why I'm talking about this topic is because, like, some parents are talking about this and there's a parent from America whose kid has some sort of, like, vision impairment and there was something going on neurologically, we don't know what's going on. And for the whole of his life, he's been given an iPad to teach them how to. Teach them how to use it, right? But he never truly uses it and he hates it. But after we talked about, like, we taught the child how to use gestures and whatnot, he's signing a lot more and signing in sentences now and with the mouth shapes moving too. So I'm not saying that this is going to work for everyone, but at the very same time, this is what we tried, this is what we learned, and it's working for some parents. And why not? You just go ahead and try it, right? So all signing and sign languages are very easy to pick up. It's very communicative. If your child has not much of a problem, motorically speaking, it's quite good. From my experience, at the very least, I cannot talk about like your experience. I'm not trying to generalize towards everyone. Right, that's what I mean. AAC communication devices has its own place for specific people. Right? But at the same time, if you're talking about a child who's slightly verbal, knows exactly what they want and supposed to say and do, then there's not much point, especially to use the aac, because bringing AAC devices around is hectic, is a lot of work. And why not just use the hands that we are given at birth already? Right? So that's it. If you want to learn more tips and tricks and specific lessons, you can go to agentsofspeech.com course we have all the courses that we used to sell now is for free as long as you sign up to the community, make an account, answer the questions and we'll let you in. All right, that's all. I'll see you next week. Bye.
