CONVERSATION, The Key To Success / The Wisdom of "Dr Jim"

Today's blog entry comes from "Dr. Jim", aka, Dr. James D. MacDonald.

CONVERSATION
The Key to Success

Especially for persons with developmental delays such as Autism, Aspergers, Down syndrome, Motor and Attention disorders.

Dr. James D. MacDonald
Professor emeritus, Ohio State University
The Communicating Partners Center, Columbus, Ohio

A personal letter to anyone concerned about someone with problems having conversations.

Imagine a life without conversations. Imagine being isolated from the world without the basic rules of conversation. Imagine having few or no friends because conversation is not easy, natural or enjoyable for you. Imagine having worked hard to learn a lot in school but few around you realize it since a lack of conversations creates a wall between you and society.

Sounds pretty terrible, no?

I know a great many persons who live such lives without conversation. They include both children and adults. Many are persons who are "late to talk" or diagnosed with Autism, Asperger's syndrome, Down syndrome, Neurological and motor disorders, ADD-ADHD, Environmental deprivation and other conditions limiting conversations. Many are typical children who fall through the social cracks without conversational skills and miss much learning and social progress.

I know many persons who succeeded in learning language, only to be just as isolated as they were without language. Why? They did not know how to have conversations. All that hard work learning language may have paid off in schoolwork but not in a real social life. Language without conversation can be like a Mercedes car without gas. Conversation is the key to your child 's learning, socializing, and being truly included.

THINK ABOUT THIS: Consider everything you know and use in daily life---then, ask yourself: How much of that did I learn in school or direct teaching and how much did I learn in daily interactions with life partners? I know that I learn much more from conversations than from direct teaching.

Traditional educational, therapeutic and behavioral programs work very hard teaching children to learn facts, repair problems, and behave acceptably. Unfortunately, little serious attention is usually paid to teaching the conversation skills essential for successful personal and work relationships. Communicating Partners is a program committed to helping every person, regardless of their delays to have a CONVERSATIONAL LIFE.

ALARMING FINDINGS AND MYTHS ABOUT CONVERSATION.

Our 30+years of clinical research reveal several disturbing findings (MacDonald, 2004; MacDonald and Mitchell, 2002) and unsupported beliefs that keep our children from conversational lives.

1. Many believe conversations require a lot of language.
2. School programs require conversation skills for success.
3. Many expect conversations come automatically with language.
4. Consequently, there are very few direct efforts to teach conversation.
5. Many accept questions/answer routines and monologues as satisfactory conversations.
6. Without conversations, people appear less competent than they are.
7. Many do not believe that conversation skills can be learned.
8. Many are unaware that children learn more in conversations than in school.
9. Conversations are often discouraged in education and therapy.
10. Conversation skills are rarely taught in school or therapy.

FINDINGS THAT PROVE THE ASSUMPTIONS WRONG.

Widespread research findings show the above assumptions to be untrue and actually harmful to a child's development. Those research and clinical findings support the conclusions below that are the bases of the Communicating Partners approach to Conversation learning.

1. Fundamental conversation skills can be learned long before speech: the earlier they are learned, the easier a conversation life develops.

2. Many interventions and schools teach cognitive, behavioral and adaptive skills when the children lack conversation skills to put the skills to use in daily life. Without conversation skills, that learning is stored away and wasted.

3. Many educational approaches actually train children to NOT have conversations as a key part of their learning. When children are discouraged from interacting they cannot become conversational.

4. Conversations do not automatically come with language; many children have elaborate language but poor conversation skills,and many are as isolated as when they had no language

5. We cannot consider any assessment of a child's intelligence or other competencies if child has poor conversation skills.Consequently, conversation skills will reveal the real child. Remember, conversation begins at birth, so we are talking about any meaningful social exchange as a conversation. Question assessments that do not include easy playful interactions.

6. Conversations simply mean going back and forth meaningfully with partners with any behaviors-actions, sounds, as well as words. Consequently, children need to learn conversation rules long before they talk. ---Rules such as Initiating and Responding to people, Playing more with people than things, Imitating and modeling others, Turntaking and Taking the other person's perspective. Each of these skills can begin very early in life, when their life partners enter the child's world.

7. Partners must help children have conversations with actions and sounds first-Without that learning children are likely to use language mainly to satisfy needs and perform. And real relationships do not happen that way.

8. Conversation can be learned as well as other social skills: The five responsive strategies of Communicating Partners are the key to becoming conversational. Many parents have helped children have conversational vs. isolated lives.

9. Clearly we learn and retain much more information that we get from daily conversations than from being directly taught. The social process makes learning more lasting and enjoyable.

10. Children learn much more in social contacts than in academic or behavioral drills, especially when those contacts are conversational. Do not expect your child to learn conversations in school. One to one intimate interactions are needed.

11. And remember, the major problem in for our children is SOCIAL ISOLATION AND LONELINESS, not lack of school-learning. Consequently, if INCLUSION is what you want for your child, CONVERSATIONS ARE THE KEY not academic learning.

For practical programs for building conversational lives, see
COMMUNICATING PARTNERS.: www.jamesdmacdonald.org
E-mail: macdonald.3@osu.edu and
the key book: Communicating Partners ( Amazon.com etc)

Super Star Speech, a TOS Homeschool Crew Review

One of the most popular searches that brings folks to my blog is a post I wrote about a DIY weighted vest. Therapies and equipment for a family member with special needs or developmental delays is expensive, and often not covered by insurance.

For those of us who are in that situation, wanting more therapy that is affordable, there is a speech therapy resource available for your consideration.

Speech language pathologist Deborah Lott created Superstar Speech to help parents recognize and address articulation issues at home.

She sent me an e-book pdf download version of Super Star Speech, Speech Therapy Made Simple, available for $12.95 here, or a hard copy for $18.95 or $22.95, depending upon whether prefer ring bound or spiral bound.

Our focus at home is interaction - I don't want to critique my daughter's arcticulation errors to the point where she becomes self-conscious or reluctant to interact. Yet, I'd like to work on one particular artic issue - the "th" sound. The "th" sound is the one error that I notice my homeschooler makes, and she is beginning to self correct.

If you are the parent of a child on the autism spectrum who happens to make articulation errors, I believe you should ignore the artic errors until non-verbal foundations of interaction are solidly in place.

Lott's expertise is in articulation. She and I chatted (via e-mail) about autism and articulation, and she agrees with me - interaction comes first. Self-correcting is a good sign, she told me. (yes! *smile*) She offered me the Super Star Speech product to help me assess and address this one issue with the pesky "th" sound.

Lott's book walks me, the parent, through exactly what to do - evaluating not only the "th" sound, but every sound, and how to work on developing that sound when I hear an error.

The table of contents of Super Star Speech is to the left. The book is 73 pages long, walks me through an articulation test. Page 10 is particularly important, because, there Lott shows me what is developmentally and age appropriate.

Lott walks me how to work on correcting the error at home, and I am pleased to see that I am already following some of her recommendations (the first three). We have had a lot of speech therapy over the years - I guess I learned something. I like knowing I'm on the right track, going about correcting the error in the right way. Next comes drilling - which I want to handle with kid gloves. That has the potential to create anxiety, and I choose, for now, to continue to help her in context. She's saying the name of our rec therapist, Heather, better, by reminding her in context. Lott offers some clever games at the end of the e-book that include repetition within the games, which is one way to sneak repetition in without actually sitting down to do what I call "drilling".

Lott gives parents a description to use with the child to help them place their lips and tongue in the right position. That's helpful.

Super Star Speech offers a list of words that contain each sound, plus many ideas for practicing sounds at home, beginning with lists of ideas and ending with games and flash cards to print.

If you are working with a child on articulation issues, I think you'll find Super Star Speech very helpful.

* * *

I was also given two games in e-book form to download and review, "The Insect Game", and "All About Animals".

I do like the ease that e-books give a family that is bigger than four people. With e-books, I have the option of printing as many playing boards or pieces as I desire, and the game isn't limited to four people.

The Insect Game ($3.50 / download) - okay, I'll fess up - I hate cutting little insect parts from cardstock. If you don't like to cut out little parts with scissors, don't order this one. I tolerate cutting lots of pages of straight lines for game cards, but the insect feet take more time if you're like me and like them really uniform and neat. (It's a Pennyism.) The e-book is eight pages long, and printed as-is, there are enough parts for four players. I have the option to duplicate pages to add more players. There is a set of basic game rules and Lott gives suggestions to create an easier version for younger players.

The vocabulary introduces a lot of terms like "thorax" and "phylum" and "arthropoda. This one is the more challenging game for us at my house.

* * *

All About Animals is really versatile; it is meant for children in grades K-5,and Lott has done a fabulous job making one game appropriate for such a wide age range. Lott has included two sets of rules, which she calls "options". I like that instead of calling one "easy" or for "younger" players. In my house, that makes a difference. My homeschooler has begun to realize that she is playing games with an age range on the box that younger than she is. She's not ready for some older games.

Lott has set this game up in a way that we can begin with all visuals - color picture cards matching them to the pictures within the categories on the game board. We can actually play a version where there is NO reading required! Later, the fact cards can be used a variety of ways. Lott's rules call for the facts to be read aloud, but the game could be modified for a child who is unable to speak or unable to hear with a simple sticky note to cover the category so that only the fact is revealed.

My homeschooler likes to categorize items, and she likes to play with the cards. I asked her how she knows the sting ray is a fish, and she told me, "My brain just knows." We've got to work on identifying how she knows what she knows. She clearly has memorized categories but can't explain why an animal falls within a particular category. This game gives us a new way to work on that.

I like the fact that we can make this a really short game if we need to. On days when my girl is extra wiggly and having trouble sitting, this is one we can pull out, play, *finish*, and be successful completing something.

If you purchase Super Star Speech in e-book form, or any of the games, there are additional expenses. You'll need to access a print or office store or own a printer, paper or cardstock, and toner, plus a pair of scissors.

Lott blogs helpful info about speech therapy and articulation helps and hints here.

To read my Crewmates' reviews of Super Star Speech, please click here.

As part of The Old Schoolhouse Crew of reviewers, I was given complimentary e-copies of Super Star Speech, The Insect Game, and All About Animals. I am not compensated for this review and am not obligated to provide a positive review.