Yes or No
Your child doesn't talk. How can we get around that?
The basic reason people talk – the reason any of us talk – is to ask other people to do things. If we can talk, we can exercise some control over our lives. People who can't talk need an alternative way to exercise control over their lives.
The simplest alternative to speaking is to have another way of saying yes or no, so people can ask you what you want and get an answer. This sounds obvious, but that isn't necessarily so. Sometimes these people are assumed not to understand speech, or the concept of ‘yes’ and ‘no’. This assumption is generally mistaken. In some other cases it appears that ‘yes’ and ‘no’ strategies have been overlooked, almost accidentally, by therapists or teachers without an AAC background.
Many of the people who came to the Anne McDonald Centre – school-age children, teenagers, even adults – have been offered no yes/no strategies at all. Some of them had attended special education programs that hadn’t thought that was important. Some of them had been to speech therapists, who really should have known. You can't really rely on other people; start at home.
When a person can’t answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’, to be sure, their carers often mention alternative responses – things like. “Wayne can make it clear if he doesn’t want something by pushing it away” or “If he wants something he’ll reach for it.” When you ask them, though, how Wayne can say something you can’t reach for – how he can say whether he wants to go for a walk or for a drive – the carers just look blank.
Some people think that if you can’t speak then surely you could nod your head for Yes and shake it sideways for No but this generally accepted means of non-verbal communication is often not possible for disabled non-speakers. Don’t despair, there are many other ways that do work.
Everyone needs an independent, reliable method of ‘saying’ ‘yes’ and ‘no’.
Development of yes/no responses may be the first step in introducing a formal system of communication. Yes/no responses are thus sometimes introduced to people who have no previous experience of non-speech communication and have never had the chance to indicate preferences.
