Communication Skills

            My focus child has multiple delays and disabilities.  His communication skills is one of the delays he has.  He demonstrated the ability to communicate using words, phrases, and some simple sentences up to 5 to 6 words in length. When he talks he lacks verb endings such as –ing, and eliminates some verbs.   When asking a question instead of saying “Is that my corn?”  He would say “That my corn?”  Another example is when he said “You leave?”  instead of “Are you leaving?”  He tends to miss a lot of verb usage and tense  in each sentence when he talks with anyone.  He has not developed the concept of “Yesterday/today, before/after, and more/less when he communicates with his friends or teachers.  In other words, he needs to enhance his overall receptive and expressive language skills while communicating with others.  He will need to learn how to develop narrative forms, which means stories or explanations that have a beginning, a middle, and an end, (Cook, Klein, and Tessier, p. 261). He is also greatly impacted by his delayed social skills which limits his successes in communicating effectively with others.        

            My approach to enhance his communication strategies would be to walk along with my focus child and encourage him to meet someone and communicate.  I could model for him how to talk based on what he needs from other people or begin modeling basic conversational interactions.  If all the therapist and teachers that work with this child daily encourage and require conversation he will be able to improve his ability to use language more comfortably.  Communicating his wants and needs will be the starting point for out interactions and behavior modeling.

Reference:

Cook, R.E.,M.D. &Tessier, A. (2008).  Adapting early childhood curricula for children with Special Needs (7^th Ed).  Upper Saddle River, NJ:  Pearson Prentice Hall