A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of reconnecting with an old friend and becoming acquainted with her family. She has a 6-year-old with a very inquisitive nature. Frequently, she asked “what” we were saying, “why” something occurred, “when” and “where” we were going. She was curious not only about the schedule but about [...]
Like most people with severe communication disorders, I hated going to doctors. I came home a basket case from their yelling at me as if I was deaf, or had no intelligence. Unfortunately, this lack of understanding comes from receiving little disability training in med school. In spite of the unawareness, my recent visits have [...]
These are the things that really drive us crazy. We know that some of them are ridiculous but we just can’t help ourselves. www.getannoyed.com claims to have the “World’s Largest List of Pet Peeves” including the following:
Drivers who don’t use a turn signal
People who drink directly out of the milk/orange juice container
Made up car names [...]
We often spend so much time planning events, vacations, or parties, but fail to create a backup plan to cope with the unexpected.
The first key to dealing with the unexpected is to have a low tech back up. For more information on this topic, check out the blog post “I Have a Speech Generating Device. [...]
It’s summer, you’re doing things together as a family, communicating, doing what each person is interested in, and it’s a great time. Now is the time to document stuff. Take pictures, notes, look at what helps engage a situation, notice what types of people come off well, and what best motivates.
The answer to why is [...]
Whether we are on Facebook or Twitter, many of us have caught the social media bug. It is a way to stay in touch with family and friends who live far away or reconnect with people from our past. We can even use social media to keep up with the latest news and trends. A [...]
Have you heard of a principle referred to as the “Least Dangerous Assumption?” It says that when you do not have absolute surety (data), any decisions that you make about intervention and education should be based on assumptions that if wrong, will have the least adverse effects on an individual’s ability to function independently as [...]
Both my niece and nephew recently celebrated birthdays in a few weeks. They were born 10 years apart, nearly to the day. Justin and I traveled back to my hometown to watch my niece, Krissah, graduate from high school, just three days after celebrating her 18th birthday. The next day, we rushed back home to [...]
A number of years ago, I worked with a young adult I’ll call Frank. Frank had a traumatic brain injury about 10 years before I met him. He first came to see me because he was ready to look at voice-output communication devices. Until that time he had been using his speech (which was very [...]
I was visiting a school recently when the teacher asked me about ways for her student to use his DynaVox Maestro to communicate in the curriculum during a foreign language “exposure” class her third grade students were taking. She was concerned that it might be confusing to her student if she made different symbols or [...]
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