One of the biggest signs to us of Johnathan's autism was his use of echolalia. Echolalia is meaningless repetition of another person's spoken words as a symptom of psychiatric disorder.
Most of Johnathan's speech consist of echolalia and often makes no sense. When people talk to Johnathan he will tend to just repeat back to them what they said to him. Other times he will talk to himself repeating phrases that he has picked up from tv, youtube, or even things that people in his life say a lot. Often we'll hear statements from the shows Kipper and Caillou or the movie Cars.
Johnathan has many different ways that he chooses to communicate with others. The behavior we are trying to minimize is his whines and grunts. He uses them when he wants something but can not communicate through words. This is tough because there is no way for us to distinguish what exactly he wants. Trying to figure it out can be draining to him and us. Often we will try prompting him by asking him to 'use his words'. Sometimes this works and other times it can cause him to get more agitated because he can't figure out the words he's looking for. When this prompt doesn't work we often will ask him to show us what he wants. He's gotten better about showing us but this only works when he wants something.
When Johnathan was little we taught him the signs for 'more' and 'all done'. To this day we still have him use them when we are trying to determine if he is finished eating or doing an activities. At school and in some of his therapies Johnathan has used pecs (picture cue cards) to communicate. We have used them sparingly at home because Johnathan associates them with school and therapy, not home. Through the years we've worked a lot with Johnathan on using his words to answer questions. To accomplish this we've learned many strategies to assist him with this skill. Some of the things we do are give him prompting sentence (I want...) and asking simple questions.
For those that may interact with Johnathan here are a few helpful hints to communicate with him:
1. When talking to him use the least amount of words without a lot of filler words. - Johnathan takes time to process things that are said to him. The simpler the sentence the quicker he's able to process the question.
2. Avoid the word 'no' . This is a trigger word for Johnathan and he will react badly to the use of this word. We understand how difficult this can be and can not tell you the number of times we accidentally use it. We have also found out that if we use this word with Charles, his brother Johnathan will get upset about that too.
3. Don't be afraid to ask us what Johnathan is trying to say. We have 12 years of interpreting what he says. We've gotten pretty good at it (especially me) and understand that it can be difficult for someone who's not familiar with Johnathan's speech patterns to understand.
4. Just because Johnathan's speech is delayed does not mean he doesn't understand what is being said and happening. He is very smart and there is a lot happening in that amazing mind of his. Take time to know him and you might get to share in some of the amazement.
As a parent there are those times when Johnathan says things with complete clarity that totally shocks us. Sometimes these moments make us happy, sometimes makes us emotional, and sometimes just makes us laugh. One of the most memorable times was when Johnathan had gotten in trouble for an inappropriate behavior. I was taking him to his room when he turned back to me and said 'ah come on don't be like that.' As a parent I tried to be the authoritative parent and follow through with the punishment. After getting him to the room though Jim and I couldn't help but laugh at his perfect timing.
There's one other way that Johnathan enjoys communicating with others: singing. Johnathan loves music and loves singing songs that he has heard. His singing ranges from Christmas songs, to Sunday School songs, and a large variety of songs from the radio and movies. He has trigger words that will get him singing a song and he won't stop until he has completed the part he knows from the song. Here is is when he was little singing 'Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes.’
Hope this post gives you a little bit of insight on Johnathan and the ways he communicates. Taking time to 'know' Johnathan and 'talk' with him however he chooses to really is a wonderful experience.
If you want to learn more about being non-verbal and autistic check out this page on Non-Verbal Autism https://www.verywellhealth.com/what-is-nonverbal-autism-260032
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