One of the main goals we’re working on with my son Nicholas, besides learning to walk and eat, is communication. Nicholas is 3.5 years old, is developmentally delayed, and has Autism. He is non-verbal so he primarily communicates by using us as a tool. If he needs something he will push our hand in the direction of what he wants.
He also knows a few signs and vocalizes his needs with different noises. Sometimes it’s through facial expression. He understands what we’re saying to him, so if I ask him a question and he gives me a big smile, I know that’s what he wants.
The difficult part with this way of communicating is sometimes we can’t read his facial expressions or know what he needs, especially if he’s really tired or hungry.
Like any 3 year old, he sometimes gets frustrated and doesn’t know how to communicate his needs. Add Autism on top of that and it turns into a huge meltdown. It’s sad to watch especially when I feel like I should know what he wants. We have a routine and he likes to stick to it.
Recently, we’ve been trying to get Nicholas to communicate in a more effective way by using picture cards. He’s a very visual person so we think he’s going to communicate well with pictures and by using some type of tablet or iPad for educational purposes.
The cards have pictures of all his necessities on them; diapers, feeding pump, crib, Legos, etc. Right now, we find the card, give it to him and he hands it back to us. Eventually, we hope he will get the card and bring it to us on his own. We think this will be successful for him. We’ve definitely seen some improvements in the last week or so.
Nicholas had tubes put in his ears a week and a half ago for excessive fluid. After that surgery, we immediately saw change in communication, personality, and focus.
Nicholas has always had fluid in his ears. He does audiology tests a few times a year to check his hearing. As of right now, Nicholas has mild hearing loss in both ears. At one point he had mild to moderate loss in his right ear and wore a hearing aid, but that recently improved where he doesn’t need the aid anymore.
He started preschool in August and got sick 3 times in the time-span of six weeks, one of those times being Croup.
Between the results of his most recent audiology test and an ENT appointment, we decided to put the tubes in his ears mainly to help with the fluid and recurring illness since winter was approaching, but were curious about improvement with communication.
Since then, Nicholas has been making more noise and vocalizing a lot more than before. He’s been really happy and plays more on the floor. He’s more focused on what he’s doing when he’s playing with his toys. He used to have his tube feedings while sitting on the couch, but now he will sit on the floor and play with Legos while eating.
I’m not sure if that has anything to do with the surgery, but if he was experiencing any pain before and isn’t now, it could be easier for him to pay attention.
We won’t know for sure if he still has hearing loss until we see the audiologist again. Right now we’re excited to hear him vocalizing and see him playing more. So far the picture cards are working for him. We’re excited to see where his communication goes from here.