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things that deny access to and learning of core language and aac systems:

• limit of use of language with a child to just nouns, Yes/No answers, and maybe a few adjectives
• limit of use of language with a child to pre-stored messages
• lack of effective 'modelling' of core language, in real and set up situations
• lack of effective 'modelling' in conjunction with modelling it on the AAC system
• lack of effective 'prompting' to involve child more fully in core language interactions
• lack of effective 'prompting' to help the child find the core words he needs at any given moment, are categorised on his AAC system
• standardised assessments used by Ed Psychs, SLTs and teachers that are based almost solely on noun identification result in misleading measures of cognitive ability and no measure at all of functional language status and potential for developing language and learning AAC
• lack of training, and/or lack of appropriate training for AAC user, family, carers and professionals communication aid training that focuses on teaching the locations of words and programming a device, without emphasising the importance of core vocabulary or how to use it with our children
• anyone who thinks its not their job to know anything about core words, or language development
• professionals ignoring all requests made by child for help communicating with his friends
• professionals inaccurately reporting that child doesn't want to use SGD
• people who say things like 'Are you suggesting that my staff use the communication aid on behalf of [child]?' and 'I don't see why my staff should have to become involved in the technicalities one particular communicaiton device'.
• professionals who refuse to disclose any limits to their knowledge, time, interest, etc, which is likely to have a detrimental affect on any progress with language and AAC that a child may make. This is especially important considering that many people believe that this or that professional will have the necessary resources, going on no more than their job title, e.g. speech therapist, special needs teacher, educational psychologist

training pitfalls:

Robin Hurd says in her Parents Corner article 'Defining our Terms: Language Development', May 2006, "Much of the training adults receive on an AAC system that their child or student uses consists of training the adults how to find words on the device or how to program the device. This can give the impression that the child’s biggest challenge when using AAC is to find out where the words are located. For children, however, the biggest challenge is that they need to learn how words work so they can tell other what’s going on inside their heads".

One major pitfall we have suffered with everyone supposedly working with Michael is that they only want to give him nouns (and maybe a few adjectives) to say on his communication aid, and they won't involve themselves in using core language with him. But then, no one but me told them how important core words are, and I'm just a stupid old Mum, twittering on about they don't know what.

Some trainers use mostly nouns when demonstrating a device, and hardly any nouns are core words. This is playing straight into the hands of those who already use only nouns and adjectives with our children in teaching and therapy situations.

Here is the lesson plan from the only training session that any of Michael's teachers (1) had in 7 years, run by a regional communication aid centre. If you scrutinise it closely you'll find some useful little words in there right between the meat words and vegetables.

The noun content of our homemade resources is strictly limited to those nouns that exist in the top 300 most common words. Enough to make meaningful sentences and practice language. Any more nouns than that will be prescribed by the context of the situation and the interests of the child.

system mis-use:

"If a child is using an AAC system that is full of pre-programmed sentences, he or she is not getting the practice with words that are needed to learn language. This affects not only the ability to communicate out loud, but also the ability to write and to read with understanding. For example, a child may be able to read the individual words, “Can you see me” and yet not be able to understand that this is a question, because she doesn’t have the language skills to know that the order of the words makes a difference.

When looking at an AAC system or a piece of software or educational program, the way to know if it is going to help children develop language skills is to see if it provides chances to practice putting together words and building words with a root word. If your child is not able to combine words to say his own thoughts and is not able to used different forms of a root word (friend and friendly, tall- taller- tallest, play and played), then the piece of technology in question isn’t really supporting language development." Robin Hurd, Parents' Corner, May 2006

if you want to know the least you could do to help me click here

if you want to read about Leland, who was helped to talk to his friends click here

Me on my Pathfinder - including links to short video clips