About this blog.

My son was diagnosed with PDD-NOS at 24 months. I created this blog to bring meaning to the often-confusing label. Sometimes I have answers. Other times, just more questions.

Friday, January 15, 2010

What To Expect (Almost) Age4, PDD Edition: Communication

As promised, a WTE post on speech and communication.

His most recent speech stats are here, but that doesn't really tell the whole story.

I'm proud to report...drumroll please...Brad is talking. Well that isn't exactly news, but it is a fair description of his ability. His progress on the speech front has been slow and steady. When exactly his speech took off is hard to pinpoint. At this juncture, he can express his needs and even his emotions, and his conversation skills are budding. Exhibit A:



And if it isn't obvious, the more he talks, the more he charms us with his sweet nature.

Not to take away from his progress, but there are still many challenges ahead. He's still scripting. Or something. For example, often our exchanges will go like this:

Me: "How was school?"
Brad: "The name of the day is Friday. Friday is a tuna fish day."

That having been said, on the whole, we're very pleased, and proud of his progress.

8 comments:

Kris said...

What a sweetie!

Anonymous said...

"...he can express his needs and even his emotions"

Small phrase - but huge, huge, huge in terms of accomplishment. We know the work it takes to get there.

Congratulations to Brad.

goodfountain said...

Pretty cool video!

Scripting is still happening here too. What I've noticed is that

Anonymous said...

What I've noticed is that my keyboard is very sensitive and publishes comments before I'm done!!!

Anyway -what I've noticed is that when Charlotte starts watching something new, she scripts a lot from that. It's as though scripting is her way of processing what she's hearing and incorporating it into her repertoire.

And not just from shows. She also scripts what she's hearing at school. At the beginning of the year, there was a lot of scripting from the kindergarten classroom. That seems to have faded.

It will be interesting to see how long scripting is part of processing, or if even it never goes away.

Floortime Lite Mama said...

ohmy he is doing FANTASTIC
SUper relatedness and answerng of questions and what a sweetheart

kim said...

thats good news.

my son has aspergers and his problem is he never stops talking. sometimes he does copycat talking too.

Chabott said...

This is a great video. I love the let's give it make a little more space. I can imagine my guy saying this too. Keep up the good work, Brad and Family.

Nyx said...

oh, he is so sweet. I love the way he was telling you all about what he was doing, I just think that is great. We get a lot of those nonsequitur filler-answers, too, but they always seem to come when either he is fixated on something and not paying attention or doesn't know the answer. e.g., at almost 3, we're still working on answering the "what is it DOING" question, and for a while this would almost always get answered (if at all) with some other piece of information about the object ("it's ORANGE." "Yes, but what is it DOING? "It's big and orange.") I still get that a lot, but it seems that as he learns what that means, often I can get the right answer if I just keep pressing for it. I have started trying to teach "how" and "why" but I'm not sure if maybe it's just too early. My other son, though, for a point of comparison (he's considered 'neurotypical' for whatever that's worth), will come closer to answering those questions, but often not really quite right. He's clearly working off the format. If I ask "why?" He knows to start off with "because," but what comes after that will often not really make a whole lot of sense.:) "How Children Learn to Learn Language" says certain kinds of scripting is normal, and I can really see it in my other son.