Err…Um… Angleet??? (From Watford Observer)

Err…Um… Angleet???

2:07pm Tuesday 7th July 2009

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Sorry this is a bit late, but I have just come back from a week in Israel. It’s a land where so many speak English, but not all the essential signs around the towns are in English. So I had an interesting time making sense of a world I could only partly understand. Most of the symbols I saw I could recognize. The push to have internationally agreed signage makes a lot of sense, just as we have the same sort of symbol system around the Centre as the children use in their schools.

So many of our children and young people have difficulty with oral communication. Some have no spoken language, others have very limited words and even more use speech which is unclear and difficult to understand. One little boy speaks very fluently, but only using the last syllable of every word. It’s working with someone like this that makes you realize how many peoples’ names end in the ‘ee’ sound! So we have to have ways, beyond the spoken word, of giving our children the ability to express their needs and preferences.

There are three modes of communication within the Centre: speech, sign and symbols. Most children and young people use a combination of any two or all three. The sign language we use is called Makaton. It’s a wonderful system which simplified the sign language developed for the deaf, initially to be used by people with Down’s Syndrome. But its use has extended throughout the disabled community.

The children are so forgiving of those adults who cannot understand them. One little boy, whose speech is becoming clearer and clearer as he grows up, still has moments when he has to cope with us struggling with his speech. If, after a couple of repetitions, he has not made himself clear to us, he will use signs to help us understand. Only sometimes does he have to take us to the wall of symbols to ensure he gets what he needs.

The symbols we use are from the system called Widget. They are very similar to the ones used in combination with the Makaton signing, and as I mentioned before, the children use them at school. Some of our children, who do not have any spoken language at all, have a range of symbols velcroed into pages of a book. They can then choose a symbol for what they want and give it to a worker so s/he can give them what they need.

Recently I was in the supermarket when I noticed that a woman who was looking for something specific but was unable to find it. She gestured to a supermarket worker who came over to her, but who, when it became evident the woman was deaf, stepped back with his hands in the air. She eventually used her very indistinct spoken language to make herself understood, but both the frustration she felt, and the discomfort of the worker, were palpable.

Neither of these emotions have a place at the Children’s Centre. And we use a variety of physical resources to ensure this. At dinner time, we try to give the children as much choice over their meal as we can. We often have meat (or a vegetarian alternative) and veggies with a carbohydrate of some sort. To enable the children to choose what they prefer we will take round either: a sample, picture or symbol of the foods on offer. For example, the deal with the children is that they have two vegetables of their choice with their meal. So we will take a plate with four choices like peas, carrots, corn and beans. They choose the two, or more, they want. Or we might have a choice of pasta or rice, again a sample of each will be on a plate. They can have both of course but the point is that they are able to clearly indicate their preference, whether or not they have the spoken language to do so.

The sense of empowerment of this simple routine was highlighted perfectly when I was presented with a menu written entirely in Hebrew. In many European countries I can muddle through because at least the script is recognizable to me. But looking at this menu with its unintelligible squiggles (the Arabic version was even more bemusing) brought home to me what it must be like for my kids trying to make themselves understood. I just wanted to see a picture of the food choices on offer.

Being dependent on others to give me something that they decided I would like was not an experience I appreciated. The prospect of living life like that brought home to me the feelings of frustration displayed by that deaf woman and those that are inevitably experienced by my children. It also reinforced my feelings of gratitude for the patience so often displayed by our children and young people as we work together to help them communicate their way to becoming as self determining as they can.