Communicating Partners

Hey folks, I learn best by
Doing, touching, sounding, talking, and trying a lot.
When you do all the doing and all the talking,
I just cannot do much.
However, when you do only as much as I do,
Then silently wait and expect me to do something,
I will learn what I can do
and that I can do a lot […]

Hi all,
Just had a great time in Lafayette, Louisiana.  A one day workshop and then  I evaluated 9 families.
All nine families seemed to  “get it” as they all pledged to make the  child’s life more playful and interactive and to  become a  smarter consumer  of professional services, especially of ones that show little gains and […]

I had a call last wee from a distressed mom whose little 16 month old girl  had been called autistic by two professionals.
I asked my basic questions that often predict  that a child will be social  communicative and develop out of autistic behaviors. Those questions are:
Does she, enjoy playing with people?
Does she imitate or act […]

Hi all,
I saw a 21 year old gentleman yesterday. I have known him  for 19 years.  he  has had severe oral motor delays.  While he has  a great deal of language in  his head  he is still not clear in his speech often.
On thing I noticed is that he  usually waits for others to talk […]

(And others who want more effective relationships)
It is perplexing to meet someone with a great deal of language but whose social life is extremely limited. The person knows a great deal but rarely has two-way conversations. He often insists on his ideas and his partners often feel disregarded or just tools for listening to him. […]

In a boy with AUTISM
Reported by James MacDonald and Jodi ( John’s mother)
John (W) was four years old. While he had a vocabulary of over 300 words, he mainly talked to himself in rote phrases, rarely communicating with his language. His parents saw him as intelligent since he read at the first grade level, solved […]

Children with Down syndrome are biologically determined to be slow in developing speech and in many other motor and cognitive skills. Many believe that these children are generally very social because they enjoy people and seem friendly. However, in over 30 years with over 500 children with Down syndrome, we have found that, […]

Please use this ‘tutorial’ to learn and help others learn to get your child to communicate first frequently with sounds before they move to the difficult motor job of combining sounds into words ( particularly for children with little practice communicate or with motor delays as in Down Syndrome.) You ay […]

One way we have learned to improve a child’s understanding of language is to give him or her less of it at any one time.Our video based research has shown , over and over, that much of what late talking children hear is mismatched language. Mismatch means that the language they hear is much more […]

In a men’s group designed to allow men to have personal conversations, I learned the value of a “talking stick’. When we first met there was a lot of random taking, ‘overtalking” and interrupting. The purpose, however, was to get men to listen and respond sensitively rather than superficially. For quite a few meetings […]