this is why i love doing therapy with gestalt language processors

I just had an awesome session with an autistic student. If you didn’t know this student, you might think that this session was pretty unremarkable. But I’ve been working with her since the beginning of last school year, and this session was huge for us. In the beginning, when I started working with her last year, she would not say anything during our sessions. I would be modeling language verbally and with AAC and I wouldn’t really get anything back. She would sometimes explore the AAC by pushing buttons but she never attempted to imitate me. As the year progressed, she started using more and more unintelligible strings of speech we call jargon and humming and singing to herself. She also started using signs (more, help, please) and towards the very end of the year she began imitating more single words. This year, I am seeing a huge change in her and it’s so exciting!

She has been really loving my dollhouse lately. She loves getting all the pieces of the out (the mom, dad, baby, brother, chair, bed, rug etc.). I started modeling the gestalt “let’s get more” last session as we pulled them out of their ziploc bag. And today she said it before I even got the chance to!

Then, she set up all the figures in the dollhouse, putting the bed upstairs, the rug on the floor etc. Then she started playing with a tiny cup and plate that came with the dollhouse. For the last few weeks she has just loved throwing this little tiny cup and plate up in the air and letting them fall to the floor. I think she likes the sound of them hitting the floor or just thinks it’s funny. But today I started modeling more language to go with her action of throwing them up in the air repeatedly. I started saying “ready, set, go” and then she would throw them, and I would exclaim, “oh no!” when they fell. The last few sessions we have done this, she had been imitating me and saying “ready, set, go”.

But today was different. I started saying “oh no!” every time they fell to the floor and she would start laughing so hard and then do it again. After several times of doing this, she started joining me and saying “oh no” as well. Then, something amazing happened, she added on to it and said “Oh no! Not again!”. That wasn’t something I had modeled for her. She generated that all by herself! And she kept doing it, doing it several times as she threw the cup and plate into the air.

By laughing with me, repeating “oh no,” and then adding her own phrase, this shows me that she was truly engaged with what we were doing. It’s activities and moments like this that will help us keep building her meaningful language.

If I had stopped her from throwing the cup and plate, or insisted that we play with them “the right way”, she might not have had the chance to use that phrase at all. Because I followed her lead and joined her play, what we were doing was meaningful to her and she used a new phrase to communicate in that moment.

My name is Kayla Birch and I’m a Speech-Language Pathologist. If this type of play and langauge development sounds like your child, your child is probably a gestalt language processor! If you have any questions or would like to have me work with your child, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me!