I was reminded of this while writing progress reports. We need to aim for success and to look for signs of success while using AAC or when doing any language work.
The aim for any communication is to build relationships. This is the same when we communicate with our spouse, when we communicate with our friends, and when we communicate with people we just meet. When the aim is anything else, the communication becomes weird.
This is the same for using AAC. Our aim is to build relationships first, then we can focus on other things. When we aim to build relationships, we can see success. We can see
- Increased Attention to Interactions
- Increased initiation of communication
- The use of more vocabulary
- Longer interactions
- The use of more communication tools/pages
- Greater enjoyment of interactions
- More independence in communication.
Both parties will want to interact more as they are enjoying themselves.
This will then encourage us to build stronger relationships and to model, model, model. When your aim is a stronger relationship, you will create a positive communication environment.
Sam The Speechie 