Comments on: Two-Way Communication

By: letRVoiceBHeard

letRVoiceBHeard — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 00:27:47 +0000

An Excellent post with lots of room for thoughts! One of the biggest things I have seen is how many people don’t understand such. The mind works in misterious ways that we are just scratching the surface. It’s similar to when a person yells at a deaf individual as though that’s going to make them hear any better.

Because when young I studdered a lot I was more non-verbal but my mind was going a mile a minute. It may be why I could relate to such issues and have learned earlier on how to communicate without always using ones voice.

Thanks for posting this.

By: Fielding J. Hurst

Fielding J. Hurst — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 15:13:26 +0000

Great post. This is the case with our 7 year old daughter who is close to non-verbal. We also noticed that talking about her in front of her, about therapies, autism, etc. seemed to have a negative impact on her. We stopped doing this and now assume that she understands everything we say.

We’ve even started using it to our advantage. We say good things about her or about things were are proud of her doing, etc. She thinks she is eavesdropping on us.

By: Mary Fletcher Jones

Mary Fletcher Jones — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 14:05:42 +0000

This has been my experience with my son. Although he was speaking before he was a year old, he did not connect well with me for years. Speech therapists told me that his receptive language was poor, so I learned some basic sign language and started using picture cards and a declarative language style (and, as you say, keeping it to his age level and interests, mostly) to enhance his comprehension. Since he is all I really have of family and I am divorced, it is just the two of us mostly, so I think I kept talking as much for my own need for connection as to help him learn. I compared it to talking to someone in a coma — you hope they can hear you somehow. As he got older (now he is 10), he started recalling things we did and said several years ago. In great detail. And it appears to have meant a lot to him. And sometimes when I think he is tuned out, and I am talking with another adult, he will pipe up with a comment and I didn’t even know he was following our conversation. So now I know he WAS paying attention while he was flicking and avoiding gaze. He was with me — he just couldn’t show it.