Teddie is without any doubt in the middle of ‘the system’, Speech and language are helpful but not actively helping.  He’s on the waiting list to see Cadu (Child assessment development unit) but the waiting list is 6-9 months and there’s no guarantee they will ‘take him on’. 

Teddie attended a 6 weeks speech and language course, which was in my view helpful. The feedback I received via a phone call was they thought there was a divide between Teddie and the other children. The strange thing is he was assessed and offered a place, but it goes by age rather than ability.  It was felt receiving speech and language wasn’t the thing right thing for Teddie at that stage?????????????.

There is no single behaviour that is typical of children with learning difficulties, where one child lacks in one area the other child can exceed in, It is estimated that 1 in 6 children have a developmental disability. 

After lots of research, I brought it upon myself to teach Teddie to use PECS ( Picture Exchange Communication System). Pecs has been successful with individuals of all ages, it demonstrates a variety of communicative, cognitive and physical difficulties.  

Teddie welcomes every new, I know if we started on Pecs he would have no issues learning it. You can buy PECS boards and the cards from their website but we decided to print our own, mainly because they are very expensive. 

PECS is by no means a ‘instead of’ system, the idea behind it is you use a card that corresponds to what you want. 

Every morning Teddie will come down and put something on his ‘i want board’, This morning he wanted toast, he actually showed us by using his cards how to do it, Bread, then toaster then a plate. This morning he wanted fresh orange drink so he used two cards for one thing. (see below this boards)

 Using a ‘first’ and ‘then’ board is a must with children with any disabilities, it just presents what we need to do now (first) and what we will do next (then). The idea is to show them a preferred activity or a possible reinforcer to motivate them to complete the thing they don’t want to do, We very rarely use this now as Teddie but its there for when we do need it.Pecs it is then….pecs-uk