There has been a lot of discussion this week about Nea's jargon speech. We think Nea actually believes that she is communicating. She uses a cadence, she uses inflection, she pauses throughout the sentence, etc. We call it "word salad" around here. She puts together bunches of syllables and sounds so well that it almost sounds like another language. And if you say, "Sorry, I don't understand." She will repeat it the exact same way with the exact same pauses and exact same inflections. How crazy is that? Did she create her own language some how and the rest of us are just too dumb to understand? Her jargon sentences are long and end with a word that we recognize in the English language. So conversation may go something like this....
Me: Nea, did you go to school today?
Nea: elkdjrowiejosidlsldl, dusoidjksdjrbaklid, lskdjflskdrosiuoijsfjlsk school
Me: (arggh) umm....Did you see your friends?
Nea: slkdjifojeoijsildksrosiBilly, lskdjrdiosuldulskdSusie, dksduoirueiowjsldkjfslkdjschool
Me: uh....What did you get to do today?
Nea: dkjfdslkdjiudsdkfljdjteacher, ldkjdfieowijeijsdlkfjslbus, bdlskdjfdidlksdjfoschool
Me: Great! (good gravy Marie!)
Her jargon speech is very melodic and cherub sounding. It's almost as if she's singing when she does it. Her Poppa and I, her teacher and her therapists can pretty much get the message she's trying to convey. I'm not sure if we are all teaching her English or if she's teaching US a new language!
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| One on One at school with OT |
But as beautiful as it sounds, and as cute as it is......it doesn't help her with being able to communicate effectively.
Babbling and jargon talking is a normal developmental phase. She should be long past that phase by now. Like, well over a year past it. Her speech therapists both talk about her motor planning issues. One of the exercises she does is a flip book with different sounds. It's almost like practicing a tongue twister over and over and over again.
The flip book has 3 different sections. Each section has a picture with the word written above it. The book starts with the pictures all the same. Then a section is flipped, and new word appears. Then another, then another....
bee bee bee
bow bee bee
bee bow bow
bow bow bee
......on and on. She does very well at the beginning...saying the 3 pictures with the same 3 sounds. But when the picture flips, and she has to move her lips, tongue and mouth differently...she stumbles quite a lot. She also goes so fast, that her speech therapist thinks its in there somewhere, but buried in the jargon speech that surrounds it. The million dollar question is how do you fix it?
At this point, everyone believes that we leave it alone. The theory is that as she gains more language, she'll start exchanging jargon for English words. The school speech therapist believes that her mind is moving so fast, that the rest of her verbal language cannot keep up. She has hopes that Nea will have a large vocabulary and speak well as she progresses. Her rehab speech therapist does not want to discourage it, because NO ONE wants to discourage a child with Autism to stop talking. Vocalization is the key to language development. That's why we get so excited when babies utter those first cooing sounds. It's the start of communication.
So in the meantime everyone will just continue to teach each other.
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| Working on fine motor skills |
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| Water table with a friend |
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