Finding the Words: Working Through Profound Loss with Hope and Purpose

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An honest, pragmatic, and comforting field guide for each of us searching for a way to live with loss.” If you need a good suggestion for a starting word, leave the "Word #1" box blank and press "Submit." The staff on the ward whether it’s cleaners or consultants - it’s their patch, it’s their territory Many of us worry about speaking to our GP if we’re struggling with any health problem. When it comes to talking about our mental health, it can be harder still. But bottling things up can make things worse. It’s better to ask for help earlier on. That way, if needed, you can start receiving the treatment you need to set you on the road to recovery. We’re here to talk about all this – and more – in this new column on topics in communication competence that affect individuals on the autism spectrum. In the next few columns you’ll see “gestalt language development” on the spectrum presented in a new light. You will see it as a natural process (both on and off the spectrum), with predictable developmental stages. You will see that at Stage 1, multi-word language “gestalts” are used communicatively. At Stage 2, these gestalts are broken down, or “mitigated” into two parts and recombined with other language chunks to produce semi-original utterances. At Stage 3, these phrases are further broken down into single words and word-parts, or “morphemes,” and kids begin to generate their own original sentences! At Stages 4 and higher, ASD kids look very much like “typical” (or more accurately, “analytic”) language processors as they start to develop more grammatically-complex sentences!

Finding the Words is a masterclass not only on grief, but on survival. The tragic deaths of Colin Campbell’s teenage children, Ruby and Hart, created a sinkhole of sorrow so deep it felt as though it might consume the world. Though this book emerged from that terrible loss, it never feels despairing. Instead, with profound vulnerability, unflinching honesty, and startling humor, Campbell offers a rare glimpse at the depths of unimaginable loss and a pathway forward toward renewed life. This book’s timeless wisdom is a gift to anyone with a broken heart, and to all who care for the broken-hearted with love.” This PowerPoint has everything you'll need to provide your class or children with some fun word games for kids.

For instance, Scrabble is one of the most popular word games in the world, and requires players to rearrange random letter tiles into meaningful words. Other word scramble type games include Boggle and Jumble, in which players are given jumbled letters of a single word. Plenty of word scramble games also exist for the digital crowd, including Words with Friends. Words with Friends is a very popular game that functions much like Scrabble and requires players to create words out of random jumbled pieces. Wordscapes is another popular game that requires players to rearrange letters to form words. Of course, there are also classic games like word searches and crosswords, which are similar to word scrambles. Ways to improve at word scramble games? Once you have the more detailed progression to look at, you can begin to apply the intervention techniques to your own child…and begin to see that natural language acquisition does take place in children on the spectrum! Cam’s mother was fortunate. Even though Cam was moderately dyspraxic, and mostly silent up until then, he did have the motor strength and coordination to say something at a relatively young age. Those children who are more severely dyspraxic might not say anything intelligible for many more years, and parents’ glimpses of gestalt thinking and processing might not appear through language for a very long time. The best reason to read Finding the Words is to sample Freedman's insatiable passion for reading and learning. . . . The portrait of Freedman that emerges from Finding the Words is of a shy young man who built a persona out of books."—Alex Hanson, The Valley News

Blanc, Marge, “Language Development in Children with Autism: A Practical Approach to Gestalt and Echolalic Learning Styles”, Presentation to Wisconsin Speech-Language-Hearing Association Convention, 1998. We will return to Will’s story, I promise you. But before we do, let’s continue to construct the conceptual bridge from typical kids to ADD kids, and next, to those ASD children who are younger and solidly within the prime language learning years…those who are 3 – 8 years old. Their story will help us better understand older kids, like Will, whose language appears more rigid and intractable. OK, so this language acquisition processing of typical kids may make some sense, as you think about boys you have known (or been!)…but, what about our kids…what about Will…what about your own child? Word Scramble games are created by rearranging jumbled letters. Players then rearrange these random letters into meaningful words. For instance, you might unjumble the word 'BOWLERS' or 'BELOW' from the letters SROEWLOB. Rearranging random letters is also called anagramming. Anagramming can be a game in and of itself, and has been practiced for hundreds of years. Old kings liked to rearrange and arrange the letters in words and see what other words they could find. Many modern word games also find their basis in the rearranging fun of anagrams. Over the next few columns, we’ll provide further examples of Will’s language development progression, and contrast it to the more predictable pattern demonstrated by a younger child, Daniel.

Some children who are four years old have begun some mitigating, isolating the parts of the gestalts they can actually say clearly. Depending on a child’s speech skill, it is possible to move on to Stage 2, 3, and even 4 with a little help. After all, little boys do this all the time, and some young ASD children are happily coming up with their own original sentences at Stage 4 or even higher. If your child’s language does not sound “stilted” and forced, you have probably found your child’s level.

This one example shows how, with older children, even without a history of support in natural language acquisition, the stages of the process can occur. That all the stages are happening at once with Will is confusing, to be sure. But we overcome that by writing it all down (Will’s mother is our most reliable scribe). If we don’t know where a gestalt comes from, she and Will do. Then we speculate about its current usefulness to Will. We can then respond conversationally, often giving Will a more “transparent” (common) gestalt as his next language model. Browse our online range including our range of mental health resources, wedding favours, Pause for Mind and greetings cards. By our fourth month, Dylan was mitigating routinely. He used, “I got it!” (a modeled gestalt), but also changed it to “We got it!. During a paper-cutting activity, Dylan produced all of the following: In the next column, we will examine Daniel’s progress in more detail, taking you through the stages of mitigation and then those of generative grammar. We will provide a roadmap to use with younger children, but also a model that can be modified for an older child…like Will.Prizant, Barry M. and P. J. Rydell, “An analysis of the functions of delayed echolalia in autistic children”. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 27, 1984. During our sixth month, Dylan was producing far less-colorful language, in general, but it was almost all “transparent,” and easy for familiar partners to “read.” Following is a short excerpt from a session during that time. The two clinicians are labeled C1 and C2: