In this episode of the Speech and Language Kids Podcast, I’m give you an overview of Alternative and Augmentative Communication (AAC).  And in the quick tip, I’ll tell you where you can download tons of free speech and language materials made by speech-language pathologists.

Click “play” to listen to this episode:

In this episode you will learn all about augmentative communication (AAC), including:

Links and Resources Shared in this Episode:

Don’t forget to head over and give me a rating on I-Tunes:

I received this comment from a concerned listener and I thought it was great information to share with everything.  Here’s her email and my response:

I just listened to your podcast from April 4th about AAC. It was very informative and helpful to guide parents with various from s of alternative communication. I am a parent to a child who is Deaf, and I am a teacher for Deaf and Hard of Hearing. When I heard what you shared about sign language, I cringed. Just like there is a standard form of PECS symbols, there are standard forms of sign language used both in the Deaf Community and in practice. The signs themselves have a rich  etiological history that linguistically based. It would not be advisable to tell someone in A remote country to say apple for man or banana for woman. The same is true for sign language. As you mentioned, there a several good resources available to help parents learn the standard signs. Signs in the Deaf community are adapted when a child has motoric difficulties. I have a little girl that I work with that has trouble signing play. She sees my sign, the standard sign, and produces her version. The other time a home-made sign is acceptable is with a negotiated sign. For example, my daughter loves Saturn, but there is no standard sign for it. It typically is spelled. So she signs Saturn by putting her arms out and rotating her body. We know  when she meets other Deaf peers and adults, they will not understand her, so we encourage her to spell the word. I’m thinking that if parents just make-up signs and don’t look for the standard pronunciation, then they are missing the chance to benefit from learning the language and being understood by those who do know ASL. A couple of my favorite resources are www.aslpro.com, and Rachel Coleman’s Signing Time videos. There are other great ASL apps for smartphones. Www.signingapp.com has great signing picture dictionaries designed for kids.  I hope this helps and you can use these resources to guide parents in the future. Thanks for taking my comment.

Thank you for sharing this information with me!  I will add a post to the website to provide parents with this information as well. When I was talking about using made up signs I was thinking of those kids who just need a few signs to get them going but who will be verbal communicators once they get their jump start. For these kids, they will most likely never be communicating with other ASL. At that point we just want the parents to try anything with them, more like teaching them to use gestures to communicate their wants and needs. However, I do understand your point about helping children learn actual sign language and I did not explain or clarify that in my podcast. I understand your point that if you’re doing sign with a child it might as well be from a real sign language so that they will have the opportunity to use that language if needed. I will share with my readers, thanks!

Do you have a different opinion on this?  I’d love to open up a dialogue about this so feel free to reply below if you have something to say on the topic as well!

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The post A Parent’s Guide to AAC for Children appeared first on Speech And Language Kids.