What if engagement isn't as we expect?

Yeah, we had a few people, I think, coming in with some questions and comments on this one around like, what if they're not looking? What if they're not necessarily...

using it as we expect and for anyone listening and not watching I was very much in inverted commas there because that can quite often be a you know um a phrase that we hear people saying isn't it well they're not really using it properly or they're not using it how we expect um so I think it's really important we we get into this because I think we just had a little quick chat didn't we and and there's that key message is just because a an individual isn't engaging with AAC in the way we might expect it doesn't mean it's not the right tool it can take time as we've talked about to I think not only teach that but also help people see the power

of AAC

for themselves see the power of having their own voice and on that little bumpy road to getting there we can see some things can't we that might might not necessarily lend itself to um speaking adults around them seeing the value in how they're interacting

Yes, because so often in the past, I think it probably still happens, but it definitely happened in the past, that a child will have like a trial of AAC, particularly high-tech AAC.

So that might be an app on an iPad or it might even be, you know, a really specialist dedicated device that gets loaned for a while.

And that trial might be, you know, between two weeks or a couple of months and the child almost like has to prove that they are, in inverted commas again, ready for AAC.

And I think, Ruth, we've both had experiences with the luxury of independent practice.

Wow.

where often the family have purchased an iPad.

So that is just available for the child all the time and an unlimited sort of trial period.

And that sometimes it does take months for a child to kind of work out what it might offer them in terms of their communication.

Yeah, definitely.

And I think sometimes if we don't, you know, we've talked about it before, haven't we? How tiny the percentages of children where you give them a device and within a couple of weeks or a month, you're suddenly seeing all of these words coming out that nobody knew that they had in their head.

Yeah.

the most part of children, that process of teaching language does take time.

And I think particularly when we think about our autistic children, we are considering the load that they carry just by being awake and present in the world around them with the extra sensory processing that they're doing, the language processing that they have to do.

and all the other things that their kind of brain power is taken up with dealing with yes that sometimes modeling AAC can can be the straw that breaks the camel's back a little bit sometimes can't it where it's like not today not now and how that shows up it doesn't necessarily mean that the tool is not right for the child but in that moment