Communicating Partners

(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 […]

A parent recently asked me: Should I be more concerned with teaching my child facts and information or helping him interact more frequently and effectively with people?
We have been told that our son needed to be trained to learn cognitive skills like numbers and colors for school and to be reduce his “autistic” habits and […]

At least once a week I hear a grieving, frightened parent tell me her child has been called autistic or PDD or “on the autistic spectrum”. Usually they described themselves as ‘devastated’, ‘depressed’, “confused” and at a total loss for what to do. I have worked closely with such parents for over 35 years. […]

Many parents hope and expect that speech therapy once or twice a week is the answer to getting their child to have clear speech. That is simply impossible; you child is learning how to speak in ever interaction with your and his other life partners. Also, he will learn how to speak clearly from […]