people with autism who are verbal. This set of communicative skills is known by Intensive Interaction practitioners as ‘The Fundamentals of Communication’ and is also the set of learning outcomes typically seen in Intensive Interaction (Appendix 2). Whether your child has never acquired these skills or whether, like my son who regressed, your child needs to re-acquire these skills, the process is the same. When we began Tom’s home programmes
Tom spent all his time repeatedly writing out film credits.
they can speak.
I was desperate to hear him speak. I had no idea of the second heartbreak awaiting
Why don’t our children socialise more?
us: Tom was to acquire speech—lots of it—
There are two main reasons my son
but without social communication. Tom’s
had difficulty socialising before Intensive
home programmes left us with a boy who
Interaction. Firstly and most obviously,
could speak but could not connect, who
he lacked some very basic skills such as
could read and write but not communicate.
an ability to truly enjoy another person’s
He spent his days ‘scripting’, for example,
company, an ability to mind-read or share
repeating bits of DVDs or computer
experiences, humour, fun, drama, emotions
games from memory and writing out film
and to deeply connect with someone else.
credits repeatedly. We had given him what
I had much less awareness of the second
we thought were communication tools
reason for his difficulties: we, his parents,
(speech, pronunciation, vocabulary, reading
other family members and teachers also
and writing) but those were absolutely not
lacked the basic communication skills
the tools that would help him socialise
necessary to communicate with him! What
and connect with people. When choosing
our children need is for us to socialise and
programmes for children with autism,
play in a way that is meaningful to them
parents and professionals need to be
and that they can access. I needed to
absolutely clear that speech does not
make the same sorts of adjustments that
equal communication, that communication
mothers make when playing and socialising
is more important than speech and that
with their typically-developing younger
people with autism usually have impaired
children. (Nind & Hewett, 2005, chap. 2)
social communication skills whether or not 14