Stimming or Learning? Considerations For Kids Who Repeat Themselves with AAC
At the CARD 2015 conference earlier this month, I had some great conversations with professionals who wanted to integrate more AAC into their work with beginning communicators. One of the issues that came up was this: What about kids who keep using their AAC to say the same thing over and over? Here are some of the things we discussed. For beginning communicators, repetition is part of exploration. And exploration is part of language learning. Extinguish repetition and we have effectively shut down a tool for language development. Turning off the device, taking it away, or turning the volume controls to silent is NOT an option. (Whew! I can’t tell you how happy I was to hear consensus on that point!) No feeling person would tape the mouth of a speaking child to keep them quiet, and this is the AAC counterpart. Silencing a person by restricting access to their... [Read More...]
Filed under: PrAACtical Thinking
Tagged With: intervention, repetition, silence, stimming