The Power Of Pause: Success Using Wait Time With Gestalt Language Processors

I just heard one of my students talk for the first time and I am so excited!!!

Let me tell you what happened.

First, let me tell you about this student. He started at our preschool towards the middle of last school year. He was what I would consider to be “nonspeaking”. I didn’t hear him say any words or vocalizations even. And his teacher didn’t either. He liked to play with simple toys such as cause and effect toys, he wasn’t very interested in functional or symbolic play.

This school year, I had been noticing that when I was really quiet and giving him “wait time” he would vocalize under his breath a little bit such as singing or counting to himself-unintelligible, but still something. He has also been very successful with using AAC: requesting during snack and labeling animals during play.

Lately, he has been gravitating towards my bookshelf when he comes to speech. I have a book that has one of those button panels on the side with different pictures of farm animals, and each one makes makes the sound of the animal. He loves to push all of those buttons and listen to the sounds. He can also find the animal that matches on the AAC device and push it. He always seems very “in the zone” when he is holding and looking at books.

Today he grabbed a Priddy First Words board book from my shelf. After watching a free training from Meaningful Speech yesterday about how gestalt language processors need more silence in their sessions so that they can process and then maybe talk, I decided to be very quiet and watch him interact with the book. After some uncomfortable silence, he started to point one-by-one to all the pictures on a page and vocalize-unintelligibly-on each one. I had never heard him do that before. After a few minutes, I decided I had a better book for setting up communication opportunities, so I grabbed the “Where’s Spot” book with flaps that I already had an AAC phrases page for. On each page, I used the same repetitive dialogue as he would lift the flap. I would say: “Uh-oh!” “That’s not a dog, that’s a [animal name]” “Where’s the baby dog?”. He was super interested in this book and loved lifting the flaps and hearing me say my dialogue. After a few pages, I stopped and waited before saying anything to see if he would initiate anything to make me keep going. After some long, painful moments of expectant wait time, HE DID! He looked at me and said “uh-oh!” very quietly to initiate the dialogue. I knew he could say “uh-oh” because he has said it before in therapy, but it had been AWHILE! I guess I haven’t been utilizing wait time enough with him!!! After he initiated with “uh-oh”, I finished the dialogue. After a few times doing that, I decided to pause after saying “that’s not a dog, that’s a [pause]” to see what he would do, or if he would even try to fill in the blank. I honestly wasn’t sure if he could or not. After another long, and honestly kind of uncomfortable, pause, he looked at me and said “LION!”! I couldn’t believe it! My para was in the room with me and we both about fell out of our chairs. We had NEVER heard him say any word besides “uh-oh!”!!!!

My mind is blown!! I am SOOO GLAD that I decided to use expectant wait time-to pause and be silent-to give him that opportunity to talk! After he said “lion”, we kept continuing with the book and he was able to fill in the blank after “That’s not a dog! That’s a…” with “monkey”, “turtle”, “penguin”, “snake”, and more! And every time, the pause got shorter and shorter. When the book was over, he turned back to the beginning and wanted to read it again, and we did! He even started trying to verbally say more parts of the dialogue such as “that’s not a dog!” and would push the phrases that I had programmed onto the AAC device as well.

Thinking about this experience, a few things come to my mind as to why this was such a successful session.

1) I have been working with this student for MONTHS! He started back in JANUARY of 2025, now it’s OCTOBER of 2025. It takes time!

2) I had the knowledge/expertise (thanks to trainings I’ve done about Gestalt Language Processing by Natural Communication, Empowering Speech Services, and Meaningful Speech) to suspect that he was a Gestalt Language Processor based on his singing and counting to himself. And I also knew to use very rich intonation and repetition since he would be drawn to that.

3) The knowledge I had about GLPs helped me to “presume competence”. Because I presumed competence, I gave longer wait time to give him the opportunity to respond or initiate communication, and he did!

4) I followed his lead. This communication opportunity might not have happened if we did what I was planning to do this session which was to show him the “toy” page on the AAC device, and let him pick a toy to play with. When he gravitated towards the books on the bookshelf, instead of stopping him and redirecting him to the table with the AAC device, I decided to follow his lead, and look where it led us!!

Moments like this are just so exciting to me as a Speech-Language Pathologist. I love my job so much!

This experience is kind of throwing me for a loop in a way. I am asking myself:

• Was he able to say words this whole time? And I just haven’t been setting up communication opportunities in a way that was comfortable or engaging enough for him?

• Is it my fault that he hasn’t started saying words in speech therapy until now?

• If I had done better at using longer wait time, would he have started doing this months ago???

I guess I’ll never know the answers to those questions. But this experience has taught me to always presume competence, follow the child’s lead, use wait time-even if it’s uncomfortable-and keep learning more about Gestalt Language Processing!

Where do I go from here with this student?

So my first thought, is that I will continue to use books with repetitive dialogues with him since he seems to enjoy them so much and it gives him a perfect opportunity to use his words! He really does seem to be a Gestalt Language Processor even though I haven’t really heard him say any phrases. (Well, actually it sounded like he was trying to say “that’s not a dog”, it was just very unintelligible). I know that GLPs are “intonation babies” (as Meaningful Speech calls them), meaning they are drawn to rich intonation in language and that’s how they learn. I think that’s why he responded so well to our activity with the Spot book today, I was using very rich intonation while doing the repetitive dialogue. I think he might actually really like the book I wrote, “No Sleeping There, Silly Bear”, I wrote it for kids just like him! The repetitive dialogue on each page is “No no no, silly bear! No sleeping on the [object]! You need to sleep in your bed!” And I chose objects that kids usually know such as tractor, pizza, snowman, school bus etc.! I usually pause before saying the object to see if kids will fill-in-the-blank and also at the end when I say “you need to sleep in your bed”, I see if they will say “bed”.

I am going to keep modeling phrases and using more expectant wait time. I think the more we can get him talking and saying words, obviously, the better his articulation will get and he will get more and more comfortable and confident using his little voice. I do think that it’s going to be hard to get him to talk during class. He seems to be maybe a little overstimulated and overwhelmed in the class, especially since it is pretty loud with the other students. I’m not sure we will get him to be very verbal in class, but we can definitely try and I will talk to the teacher and paras about setting up communication opportunities for him, so that he has opportunities to use both verbal speech and AAC to communicate in class!

If you read this far, you’re a real one and you’re probably an awesome SLP or parent and I hope if you have any questions or concerns about any of this, let know! I would love to chat!

If you have a child who you suspect is a Gestalt Language Processor, reach out to a Speech-Language Pathologist near you who specializes in this type of treatment! It is a different way of approaching speech therapy compared to what we do with other kids, and it helps SO MUCH to use an approach that fits your child’s learning style!