Whatever system that you use either cards that are written out with pictures for specific things such as hot dog no bun, macaroni and cheese, cheeseburger only mustard, ect or an electronic version on a tablet such as an ipad or on a cell phone I would recommend having your child practice where you can. Create times of practice at home as well. For example if your going to make Pizza one night and have supplies on hand to make either sausage or pepperoni don't show the packaging for both of them and have your child point. We are having homemade pizza tonight would you like me to make it with pepperoni or with sausage. When gesturing or going to the fridge starts you need to say stop use your communication app (name) or PECS,
While you may get resistance from others especially school officials who will insist that your child can and should talk remember the goal is not talking but communication. Part of my daughter being so far behind where she could be even with her disability is my having to fight the system. We will just work on speech and she will eventually get it. Meanwhile thankfully I have a fairly mellow child who just goes with the flow. My older daughter who has more of a I am going to tell you who's who and what's what personality would have resulted in outright fits on not getting exactly what she wanted when she wanted it or at least her not being able to tell you that she wanted a glass or juice in the pink cup with her dinner as you were setting the table.
Finally got them to agree that something else needed to be done so she could communicate and the battle of what would commence. I insisted on a combination of PECS at the time and ASL emphasis on the ASL. (Her private therapist had insisted on the PECS due to a low number of people who know sign language in our area and it would be a start for eventually getting her a communication device. Part of getting authorization from insurance for a device is showing that the person can learn a system of picture communication). School said fine to the sign language but it will be signing exact english. Many of the signs used in SEE are different from ASL signs and considering that my DH has cousins who are deaf and use ASL that would be confussing to everyone, not to mention that I am hard of hearing and use a combination of ASL and Pigin Sign English with ASL signs especially in loud low light situations. I am not going to hear you and when there is low light lip reading is next to impossible. They really didn't appriciate me telling them that I was not going to roll over and do what they wanted.
I ended up telling them that while DH's and my ultimate goal was while we wanted her to be able to talk was ultimately communication. Since bringing her home full time after the disaster of a part time preschool program (1 hour a week except her last year when she had an additional 45 minutes of just speech every other week) so she could get her speech and occupational therapy and they insisted on congnitive training in an attempt to prove to me that she could not learn without their help. (I just kept my mouth shut that while my degree may be in liberal studies I have a double emphasis and one one of them is early childhood education and development so I would think I would know what I am doing and how to find resources that I need especially now a days when I was trained on a paper card catalogue drawer system).
We PECs on the iPad mini 2 at home. At school he uses LAMP. I like the PECS program, because I can add photos or my own images, like a lot of the other more basic programs. I like that especially for travel, and WDW where an image of the sign or outside of the ride may not be what he associates with that choice. I can take a picture from his point of view.
Totally not on topic, but I bought my son's iPad and the program. Which was great, but then my son got excited at camp, started jumping and dropped the iPad. I was trying to figure out how to shift around money to replace it, when an older gentleman approached us at the gym. He said he was a priest and felt that we had a need and wanted to offer help. His church bought my son the iPad mini replacement. We were so blessed because we needed it for communication but at the moment I just didnt have the money.
There are several different programs out there for apps with the most common being Prologue2go, LAMP Words for Life, TouchChat Word Power, and Speak For Yourself are the most common ones. If you would like to see a comparission on how they are set up this is one I found
here is part 2
There is a link to a newer video in the discription of the first one but I have not watched it completely yet so am not posting it but letting everyone know it is out there and that I am aware of the fact.
Protecting IPADs from damage I highly recommend a good case. We use the Otterbox Defender Cases for my daughter, she had a different brand that I can not recall that started with a T on her first one which we were given from a program. Lost count of how many times her ipad had the screen shattered and needed to be replaced. We found out immediately that the organization did not get an insurance on the ipads that could be transfered to the parents of the kids who got them. I tried going through them to get it repaired even though it would take longer with having to ship it to them and then they having to have the repair done and shipped back to us. Nope the case should have protected the device and she should have been more carefull (Hello we are talking about a 4 year old).
Luckily I found a place that does computer, tablet, and phone repairs who could do the repair in a matter of hours if we wanted the front to have a different color than the rest of the ipad local to me. We went through a while until she was gifted one by a friend of mine and my friend included an otterbox case of damaged screens constantly needing replaced because I didn't know to not go with the lowes price case I could get because it was just a dust cover for all the protection it gave. While we were without an ipad because we were using some free programs that were not working the best to explore if we wanted to go with that particular one before going with the paid version. She was without an ipad for a while when it finally broke enough to damage more than the screen but we were not concerned because we had the dynavox and her pecs binde
The ipad that my friend gave her ended up needing the power charge point repaired and had to be sent away as it could not be done at the authorized repair place here in my area. We don't have an actual apple store. Since she was supposed to be doing a competition with a youth program that my girls are involved in I went and bought a new ipad on credit. The plan is that she would use it until hers was back and then it would be mom and dad's. Oldest had different plans and whined and complained that it wasn't fair that sister had an ipad and she didn't so it got given to her because I couldn't fight the preteen complaining all the time about how everything is unfair in her life. (that preteen has turned into a teen who spends a lot of time holed up in her room). When her ipad failed again after the service plan expired I started going with getting them at the place we had repairs done on her first one. Those are good places to get one for a decent price.
The store I go to takes items that have been left over a certain number of days cleans them up, resets them to factory settings and sells them at a good price. For those interested in getting a tablet for a child who is non verbal I would do some research on what app you want to go with and what type of system it runs on such as android or ios and then go shopping at your friendly neighborhood repair shop for their left behind devices. I call it adopting a homeless unwanted device and my husband doesn't get mad like he would if I brought home a cute little animal.
