Many children with autism and other developmental disabilities struggle to learn communication skills. Today, I’m making a simple argument that often, teaching pointing is a simple thing that can be done relatively easily with most learners that has a huge potential to make a big difference in his or her life. Unfortunately, in my experience, teams rarely pursue this as one of the skills they choose to teach.
There are a variety of ways to teach children who need help learning to communicate how to indicate their wants and needs. Some children can make excellent progress using their voices right from the start of therapy. Others can benefit from a wide variety of effective procedures. A few examples include:
- Teaching children sign language.
- Teaching children to communicate using pictures (Picture Exchange Communication System-PECS).
- Teaching children to communicate with speech generating devices (iPad with an app like proloquo2go).
All of these systems have advantages and disadvantages, and a particular system might be more or less appropriate for a child based on his or her individual needs. Often, I think there is a reasonable argument to be made for a child to have multiple systems. There are many articles debating fine points like you can’t take the PECS book with you in the pool, the cashier won’t understand sign language, or what happens when the iPad isn’t charged. I don’t intend to get into that here.
Today, I’m just making the simple point (ha!) that teaching pointing in addition to whichever other communication system(s) you use can make an enormous difference. Although this skill is known to be useful in the ABA world, rarely do teams pursue this. I suspect that part of the reason might be that as far as I’m aware, this skill has not been researched thoroughly. Some of the advantages to teaching pointing include:
- Many learners, even those with the most severe impairments, can learn to point for things they want in a relatively short period of time. It does require a good teacher who is skilled at shaping. But unless there are severe physical limitations, most learners can acquire this skill.
- Often, after a few days of teaching, learners will generalize this skill and be able to use it in a wide variety of contexts to ask for many items. With any of the other systems described above, it will typically take much longer to acquire a large number of items. This makes it possible to reduce frustration much faster with many children.
- Children with autism often want things that aren’t easy to communicate with sign language, PECS, or even speech generating devices. This includes things like getting a specific piece of Play-Doh, rubber band, something lined up, a piece of string, or a person to play in a particular way. All children, but especially children with autism, want idiosyncratic things that aren’t simple to communicate. Often, this becomes possible through pointing. Children can often learn to show us what they want this way, which wouldn’t be possible with any of the other systems. Again, it gives the child a way to communicate relatively quickly.
- Later, when the child has a strong pointing repertoire (often just a few days of teaching), this skill can be used to teach other skills. When the child communicates what they want through pointing, you now know what they want in that moment, which is the perfect opportunity to try to teach sign language or vocalizations.
Of course, teaching pointing does not eliminate the need for other more comprehensive communication systems. But it can be a quick win that can make a huge difference.