Speech #1 - Early Childhood

SPEECH #1 - "Early Childhood"

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Hi, how's everybody? 

My name is Jim Marks. What I am going to talk about is, how I communicated in my pre school years. Plus how I think you should work with someone being a teacher and speech-language pathologist. I had to point with my eyes to what I wanted. And then we played twenty questions.

Nowadays a pre-school child can have a communication device. They say, the earlier the child receives the communication device the better. I believe that's true. If I had a communication device with a voice when I was growing up, who knows where I might be.

If I could change anything about my childhood it would be, when I was born. My parents were fantastic. They let me do pretty much what I wanted to do. I think that's why I am so outgoing now. I think that's the most important thing when parents learn that their baby has a disability, they can't treat their child too much different than they would treat them if they did not have a disability. 

I think the most important thing is, you have to be able to work with the parents. If you have someone that can kind of talk, they will have a hard time using their communication device, because when they are around people that they know, they are going to not use the communication device. And it is going to be a lot harder to get the child to want to learn to use the communication device, because they aren't going to use it much when they are at home. If you don't use it all the time, it is hard to remember the icon sequences. It's like learning another language. If you don't use a language for a while, you'll forget some words. 

When you are working with someone on learning their communication device, you have to push them, but you can't push too hard. There is a fine line that you have to walk, but push. You have to play it by ear. These are just some of my thoughts.

In closing, I hope I have helped you to get some ideas about how you can work with a person with a communication device, and be better teacher and speech-language pathologist. 

Thank you. 

Written by James Marks