This episode is an interview with Tanna Neufeld, SLP, University of Washington Professor, and AAC Consultant. This episode focuses on intervention sessions for emerging communicators.
Quotes from the Episode
“I love working with complex communicators because I feel like they bring out the best clinician in me.” Tanna Neufeld
“You shouldn’t have to go back after every session to update the core support.” Tanna Neufeld (she suggests meeting monthly or quarterly instead)
“Kids are at their best from a learning readiness perspective if they are not in crisis.” Tanna Neufeld
“We can’t do it all.” Tanna Neufeld
“I would love to challenge you to write one thing down at the end of every day…that you did right with a kid that makes you sweat…there’s always something you are doing right and it’s important to recognize that.” Tanna Neufeld
“I’ve found more power and pleasure in my work when I focus on what the student is doing well but also what I am doing right.” Tanna Neufeld
“Starting somewhere (with AAC) is better than starting nowhere.” Sarah
Notes from This Discussion:
Focus on strengths - What CAN the student do? This will reduce the emotional toll that sometimes comes with working with complex communicators.
Explorers is from the continuum of communicative independence by Dr Dowden (also called an emergent communicator) - a child who hasn’t yet developed a reliable method of communicating with symbols (like language). For more on these levels, see: https://www.aaccessible.org/cci
We may say an emerging communicator “doesn’t have a good attention span” but perhaps we aren’t understanding what is interesting to THEM and that their attention may be appropriate for their developmental stage
Follow their lead and challenge them to try new things!
Emergent communicators might have spoken language, or be using some symbols but the communication is not reliable & may not be clearly directed towards a person
Emergent communicators may often have sensory regulation challenges or other challenges (motor, vision, etc.) that may hinder their language and play activities that may keep them in this preintentional stage for longer than we’d like
Being an explorer is typical - we are helping kids who stay at this level longer than is typical and need support
There are plenty of students who use spoken language who also need AAC
For explorers, consider Means & Functions. Means = how - symbolic/non symbolic, gesture, facial expression); Functions = communicative functions - requesting, rejecting etc.
There are barriers to getting AAC to children earlier (including access, our society’s focus on mouth words being “better,” impostor syndrome and lack of education for SLPs, and the idea that we are are “giving up” on verbal speech).
High or low tech? Consider the features that match the next step for the child’s communication. For example - are we working on first words vocabulary? Our language goal is to build a single-word vocabulary to move to the next stage (think about for example 75 words). Then, you’d need a support that has those words on it.
Personal core are words that are relevant to children (people, things and places that are valuable and joyful to them) and are often some a of a child’s first words
Emerging communicators need personal core and general core for their first-word vocabulary
Try to not get stuck with requests & labels - core words is one way to achieve this
Create a Communication Dictionary (you can use parent questionnaires, such as the one linked below) which is considering the people, places, and things the child will want to communicate about.
Don’t update the system after every session! Schedule monthly or quarterly meetings and things can wait until then to update in most cases.
Kids need to learn negation and rejection in a joyful moment - not in a moment in crisis. After practicing this, they may begin to use these words when they are upset. However, initially teach these outside a moment of crisis.
Retrospectively discuss situations where the child was upset (later when they aren’t upset) to discuss what happened but also rejection. Don’t ignore meltdowns & teach retrospectively after the student is calm. Ex) take out the core board and model: you did “not” want to go to the bathroom. You had to “go” to the bathroom and you did “not” like that. (Words in quotes are words modeled in this example)
Rather than requesting, think about what you know the child enjoys (example - the plastic duck figurine), have those out and available for the child so they can regulate. After that you can dig into routines for language.
Links:
Tanna’s Nonprofit: https://www.aaccessible.org/
AAC Early Starts Conference February 2022: https://www.aaccessible.org/event-details/aac-early-starts-conference
Tanna’s Core Board: https://www.aaccessible.org/product-page/core-word-communication-board-bundle
Parent Vocabulary Selection Questionnaire: aackids.psu.edu/_userfiles/file/VocabularySelection/index.pdf
Motivation & Joy Survey
https://www.aaccessible.org/product-page/motivation-joy-survey-for-complex-communicators
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