A Communications Breakthrough for Autistic Children

It is easy to think of people who can’t communicate as people who can’t think. That’s how deaf people were long regarded. Once sign language was invented, it became clear that the deaf were no different, intellectually, from the rest of us.The same thing is true of many people with autism who cannot speak.Case in point: Judy Chinitz’s 32-year-old son Alex. He has autism and is nonverbal. At age 25 he was in day care. As far as Ms. Chinitz knew, “his functioning level was that of a preschooler.”Yet when a friend told Ms. Chinitz that her nonspeaking daughter, Elizabeth Bonker, had started communicating by pointing to letters on a placemat-sized alphabet board, Ms. Chinitz decided to try it.She took Alex to a communication specialist who read him a short article about the moon, which said its surface is covered with dirt and dust. The specialist held up a letterboard and asked him to point to the letters spelling one thing the moon is covered with.With great difficulty, Alex pointed to “D.” Then “S.” Then “T.”Wait — what?Back home, Ms. Chinitz frantically tried to get Alex to repeat this. Yet many people with autism have dyspraxia of the body — the body doesn’t do what the mind wants it to. Even pointing is a struggle. Mother and son practiced for three months. Then one day, Ms. Chinitz wrote on a legal pad, “What is your name?”Alex pointed to the letters “A. L. E. X.”“What is your brother’s name?”“L.I.A.M.” At that point, Ms. Chinitz says, “I yelled to my mom, ‘START FILMING.'”Then Ms. Chinitz asked, “What celestial body has infinite gravity?”“B.L.A.C.K.H.O.L.E.”Says Ms. Chinitz, “My life completely changed in that moment.”Turns out Alex had been able to read since toddlerhood, thanks to his mom reading aloud to him. And he’d been watching documentaries with her all his life. He loved science. He just had no way to show her what he understood.Once Ms. Chinitz helped Alex get good at “spelling,” as this method is called, she started teaching another child. Then another. Five years ago she opened the Mouth to Hand Learning Center in suburban New York; it now has 100 spellers.Spelling is not to be confused with facilitated communication, a technique popular in the ’90s. Practitioners held autistic children’s hands as they typed. That fell out of favor because it seemed too easy to fake. Today’s “spellers” point on their own, untouched.A “communication partner” holds the speller’s letterboard to provide encouragement and regulation. This assistance has engendered skepticism. The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association has come out against this method because it “strips people of their human right to independent communication because the technique relies on an aide.”I was skeptical too — until I watched spellers at three different centers, including Mouth to Hand, a bustling storefront in a strip mall. Ms. Chinitz gathered five speakers for me. They ranged from 18 to mid-30s and emitted some strange sounds involuntarily. There was little eye contact. But they’d all agreed to let me ask them anything. So I asked, “What was life like before you could spell?”“I hated school more than words can say,” said Edison, 18, rapidly pointing to the letters. “They treated us like idiots.”“We were the loneliest people on earth,” spelled Jason, 23.“What was wrong with the previous therapies you tried?” I asked.“All of it,” spelled Rocco, 29.When I asked, “What was the worst part of life before the letterboard?” Jocelyn, who hadn’t started spelling till she turned 31, replied, “I was trapped in this stupid body. I wasn’t even able to tell my parents I love them.”Skepticism of this communication method has slowed its spread. Yet giving a child a way to say “I love you” in any language is a blessing.Creators.com

A Communications Breakthrough for Autistic Children

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