It’s been a bit of a tricky and stressful year with Ted, hence my recent absence.
We’ve been working really hard on getting him to communicate with us; teaching him signs for ‘more’ or ‘help’. It seemed to take some serious repetition and time to get it but even then it would be hit and miss and meltdowns were violent and frequent.
Recently, my husband and I started a course run by the National Autistic Society which has revolutionised our thinking.
All this time, we were so stuck on trying to get him to speak ‘our’ language that we couldn’t see he was already talking to us. The power of non-verbal communication is key to development in babies and is the building blocks for verbal communication. It is what unfortunately gets a bit skewed with children on the spectrum. But it’s still very much there and now we have been awakened to it, it has started to change our lives.
Me and my Dor
Hello. Ted here.
It seems there has been a bit of a communication break through between my parents and me. I have learned to understand some new words; some I like and others not so much. ‘Finished’ and ‘hands down’ are my least favourite.
But it seems something more than that has happened. Dor has started to pick up more on my language too. There always seemed to be such a lot of noises and hand gestures that I just didn’t understand and when I did understand, I would tell her my answer but she didn’t seem to get it. Sometimes I would tell her with my eyes. Sometimes I would tell her with a small gesture of my hand. Sometimes I would try and make my own sound but she wouldn’t respond to me and this would make me feel angry and frustrated.
I never…
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theconsciouslyincompetentcamel.wordpress.com 
Lovely post.