Rapid prompting method

Yeah, for sure.

And there's some stuff that's sketchy going on here, and so the one thing that's not explained on the podcast, or at least not properly explained, is the method these kids are using to communicate, and that's a method called rapid prompting method or spelling to communicate.

What is that?

Okay, so this is a method in which a spelling board is placed or held in front of the kids, and another adult provides prompting or physical assistance as the child points to letters.

More on that in a moment.

So the fact that someone else may be physically influencing the child's selection is truly breezed by.

This next piece of information is why I said slash misrepresented, because rapid prompting and spelling to communicate are not completely new ideas.

They're basically an older method called facilitated communication, and here's the thing.

And then I quickly realized that the typical school system wasn't necessarily fit for his abilities.

And so what we did was we, we looked and we searched and we said, "What can we possibly do if he is not able to, let's say, be verbal enough to be in a classroom and to be able to access his true thoughts? What can we do?" And what we did was we had met with, uh, Soma who was the creator of Rapid Prompting Method in Austin, Texas and we soon found out that there was a school that was being built that was, uh, created around this method of communication of using the letter board to communicate as well as bringing in other tools like art and hobbies and, um, relationship building.

And so we decided to move to attend this school about ...

It's coming up on 10 years now and, and to really focus on developing his abilities as well as me going within and developing mine because at the same time he was learning, Luke, he was also teaching me.

The first person that came to me is a coworker of my husband's from like right out of college known her forever.

And just in passing, she said to me, you know, my friend is doing this thing called RPM.

Have you thought about that for Evan? And I said, Whenever a parent of a neurotypical kid says, have you thought about this or have you thought about that?

Oh, yeah.

Did you know what it was? Yeah.

I looked it up and she told me a little bit about it, but I looked it up.

RPM was, you could find it online back then.

And then it was at a speech pathology practice who the owner of that practice was also an autism mom.