She can’t talk, but was there a chance this girl wanted me to help her write?
LAST Saturday I watched as my youngest student, a 13-yearold girl with non-verbal autism, sat in front of a keyboard strapped to a stand, at her parents’ kitchen table, and typed out the words: ‘I like Kate Kerrigan because she gets me.’
She was red in the face with the effort and finally exploded with emotion on the last word. I cried. Her mother cried. As teaching breakthroughs often do, it felt like a miracle. But it wasn’t. It was real. However, it did have one thing in common with a miracle. It happened because we ‘believed’.
I am a scientific sceptic. I am deeply suspicious of alternative medicine and believe it works entirely on the placebo effect, which is great insofar as it helps people, but I do not approve of things that masquerade as science when they are not.
Last year I was contacted by a family whose teenage daughter had been on a creative writing class and wanted to do more. I don’t take on students outside my university work, but when her father explained that his daughter was non-verbal autistic, I was intrigued. Here was an apparently intelligent child trapped inside a body that had limited cognitive function.
Her parents were using a teaching tool called Rapid Prompting Method (RPM), which encourages her to communicate with the aid of an alphabet chart, with their guidance and support.
It was difficult, but after a while the words began flooding out of her. Her parents were delighted and amazed to discover the degree of her intelligence.
Her father sent me her stuff. It was raw, honest — the words of a bright, articulate 13-yearold kid.
I went to meet her. We clicked. I don’t know how or why. She paced around, agitated and excited, but then she stood still as her mother held the board and we talked with her spelling out the words. I didn’t mind that it slow or that she didn’t look at me. I knew she was in there.
Afterwards I went home and researched RPM. After all, I’m a sceptic.
The technique is used to help children with autism and other disabilities to communicate through pointing, typing or writing. RPM is closely related to facilitated communication, a discredited technique whereby ‘facilitators’ helped the person to communicate by holding their hands or nudging their elbows as they pointed out letters on a board. Likened to a ouija board, it was wide open to abuse.
RPM begins on similar lines, with limited physical encouragement and prompting. The goal is independent typing, but there is no guarantee of achieving it.
I didn’t want to engage in bad science. However, as the parent of a child with highfunctioning autism, I understand that intelligence in autistic people can be enigmatic.
This 13-year-old girl can’t talk, but who can say she didn’t develop her vocabulary by absorbing what is around her? She can certainly see and hear almost bionically!
Not all autistic people are highly intelligent, but if there was a chance that this kid was bright and wanted me to help her write?
I struggled, but went with my gut. I believed in her, and in her parents.
So, we’ve been writing. She is determined, inventive and I love her stuff. We are developing a children’s fable — The Lion Who Couldn’t Roar. She writes with her parents’ encouragement as they hold the alphabet board. There is no touching. Verbal prompting is minimal. It’s extraordinary to watch her progress. The goal, for all of us, is independent typing. But it’s been slow. Then this.
IWAS so excited, I shouted: ‘GET THIS KEYBOARD HOOKED UP TO THE MAC!’ A few minutes later she had typed her first sentence. ‘I like to wake up in the morning.’
It was full of typos. Like my first attempts at her age.
Independence can be scary, I said. Are you ready?
She reached for the alphabet board and pointed: ‘I like the idea of freedom.’
By herself. Quickly. No prompting. Sometimes teaching is just about believing.