The Benefits of Speech Therapy

    One of the symptoms of Lea's autism was a delay in language. She was alway echolalic, which, in her case, means that she easily memorized lines on shows she watched on TV and repeated them to you. Echolalia is manifested differently in each child.  When Lea was repeating lines to you, her pronunciation was impecable but she was not able to hold a conversation and answer your questions logically. Of course, simple questions like "Are you hungry?"  or "Do you want a cookie?" could be replied to. I was grateful she was verbal but this lack of real language was an issue that needed some resolution. We were lucky enough to get speech therapy at school but this proved to be insufficient to get the kind of progress I thought Lea was capable of.

   So we turned to private sessions with a speech therapist (Lorraine Wankoff) who also taught at one of the universities here. She was absolutely the answer to our prayers. Lea had one on one sessions with her. I knew that there was no way we could keep up the sessions at the rate I wanted (about 4X a week) for a prolonged period of time because they were expensive. Normally, her sessions were done with just her and the child. The parents waited outside the room in the lobby. I pleaded with Lorraine to let me sit in a corner of the room where she held the session so I could take notes. I promised not to say one word (not exactly easy for me). She reluctantly agreed but told me this was not the norm. I took copious notes as the sessions went on. I wrote down exactly what the activity was, how Lea replied, what Lea said, if she looked at the therapist,  how long her eye contact was, etc. 

  With this data, you could see clearly if progress was made or not. Since there were notes on the activities, I could do that same activity at home. In my eyes, that would double the progress. Believe it or not, that actually worked. The idea is the speech therapist has a professional way of doing things and all I had to do was copy what she did. Lorraine put a lot of importance on creative playing even though board games were part and parcel of the session. Any kind of activity where language is involved was useful in promoting Lea's abiility to communicate well. She would have toys like dolls, chairs, tables, cars, animals on the desk. Then she would ask Lea where the doll was headed to or what they were going to eat. Lea would hesitate and think and answer. If Lea would echo an answer from a TV show that was ok with the therapist but she always redirected it so a more spontaneous reply could be provided. All these sessions were extremely interesting and of great help to us. 

   Slowly, we weaned Lea off these sessions when we were convinced that we could do it on our own and the sessions at school would suffice. This took time but we did get to the point where she was off it completely. The speech therapy sessions at school were replaced with counseling sessions. Lea had the great luck of having workers from an agency that supports the autistic community (QSAC). Without a doubt, this agency was crucial to Lea's progress. I am so grateful to them and to their staff. It really does "take a village" (to borrow a line from Hillary's book).  Even if a child is not verbal, the ability to communicate has to be honed so that our kids do not feel the frustration of not being understood. Better communication promotes better social skills and makes it easier for someone with this diagnosis to get taught new ideas and new skills.  Communication is not limited to actual speech. It could be sign language, using pictures or using a computer. Like Lorraine said "If you fix the language/communication issue, everything else will fall into place."