I have supported many parents over the years. Our aim has always been to give their child the tools to navigate life on Earth and to have the best quality of life possible.
There have been many successes and only one instance of a child regressing and the parents, on my advice , had their six year old daughter tested for a degenerative disease that her father had. She was the first female child ever diagnosed with the degenerative condition.
I continued to work with the family but we changed our expectations and her targets accordingly .
At the moment I am working with a family of a child with a communication disorder. Therefore he can be described as neurodivergent. Parents worried that he might have autism . He certainly has some sensory processing issues but it was his communication disorder that caused me most concern.
I introduced the family to the BBC iPlayer and Mr Tumble as signing might be the preferred method for the toddler and the Mr Tumble programmes are a fun way for all the family to learn to sing and sign. Obviously there are other programmes and YouTube has a plethora of signing videos that I gave them links to. But as I suspected Mr Tumble worked his magic and the toddler began to sign.
I also introduced them to PECs cards ( the child gives the adult the picture card of something they want and the adult gives them the item on the card).
I have found over the years that sometimes the child gets fed up of signing/ using cards and tries to speak. That has happened in this instance after intensive use of signing and the PECs system. However we still needed to encourage speech. His grandmother told me that he liked hearing echoes.
That reminded me of a child I’d had in school when I was head of a special school. I write about that child in my book ‘ Music Sound and Vibration’ ( link on this website if you wish to purchase a copy). We had great success with him by using a microphone as he could hear the echo of his voice. That child spoke for the first time aged seven and the microphone was the key to unlock his world.
I was with the grandmother when we purchased a £10 microphone from Asda. You can see the immediate response to the microphone and the exciting results by going to my YouTube channel . In the video you can hear the grandmother and the toddler talking.https://youtu.be/Y5nhTaJ4Hv8?si=_fq8AtwFqRyCFhi8
Supporting a neurodivergent toddler
