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Tamsin's story
Tamsin is an engaging and bright young girl whose cerebral palsy severely affects all four of her limbs to the extent that she can’t point with her hands or fingers. She can make sounds but hasn’t yet gained any recognisable spoken words. She attends a nursery specialising in the needs of physically challenged children.
When she was three, Tamsin wore two wristbands – one with a symbol for ‘Yes’ on it, the other with a symbol for ‘No’ - and she began to respond to simple questions by looking at the appropriate band. She also started looking at things that she wanted around the room, or to a different room to indicate something that was out of her sight.
Tamsin’s journey with symbols continued through the introduction of a simple communication book that contained pictures and symbols relating to her toys. Her mother would hold the book up in front of her and work out which item she was 'eye-pointing' to. Tamsin was quickly able to use her eyes with her communication book to say “Stop feeding my doll”, “She needs changing” and “She needs more drink”, but inevitably they both felt the need for more words as they played.
Above: Tamsin, aged three, plays with her doll - her eye-pointing communication book is on the left.
That’s when we introduced encoded eye-pointing into the communication book (see ‘How does she do that?’ on the right). Very soon Tamsin began to use a far richer vocabulary in her play. She started to enjoy taking control of the book, and instead of just responding to her mum’s choice of play activities, she was able to say “Go to Playthings page” and then “I want cooking games.”
Above: Tamsin's communication book showing encoding being used.
Her mum showed others how how easy it was to read Tamsin’s eye-pointing and her dad, granny, cousins and friends were soon happily listening to what Tamsin had to say as they played with her.
But one day Tamsin seemed to lose interest in playing. What was wrong? Working on intuition, we guessed that she might be looking for more of a challenge, so we introduced her to more imaginative and challenging play through a more extensive collection of symbols. Mum showed her the fun of using the new symbols to ask questions, hide items around the room for her brother to find, and chat about what had just happened in their play. Tamsin explored the new concepts repetitively, asking her mum to place items in trains, dolls houses, garages and parks. Their stories grew in richness, and she began to actively enjoy using the communication book again.
Above: Tamsin tells her mum to put lemon curd on the toy toast for her brother.
Despite this enjoyment, Tamsin used the book passively – she only used it when it was brought to her, and never chose to use it. But one day the breakthrough happened. While she was being fed porridge, Tamsin looked to her book. Her mum was surprised, but opened it and Tamsin eye-pointed to the words “No more porridge”. Her mum was amazed. Normally she would have spat out her food to show that she didn't want it, but now she was actively opting to 'speak' her choice instead! Within an hour, while her mum was feeding her little brother and making fun noises to encourage him to eat, Tamsin again asked for her book and said, “Mummy silly!”
From these small beginnings Tamsin has continued to request her book to spontaneously communicate many things that four year-olds need to say - things that are worrying her; things she wants to do and who she wants to do them with; things that happened sometime ago but have relevance now; questions she wants answered; and things she wants her brother to do and NOT to do!
Tamsin isn't totally reliant on her communication book. To ensure that her natural language continues to develop, her mum and dad carry on responding to her facial expressions and general eye-pointing, but they make sure that the book is available if she wants it.
Tamsin faces many challenges ahead, but at the age of three the most pressing was communication. Teaching her mother how to use symbol communication and how to read Tamsin’s eyes confidently has enabled Tamsin to 'find her voice' - a voice not just to be used with her parents, but with all her family and friends. In short, Tamsin, with her mother’s skillful example and guidance, has begun to talk through symbols.
giving the gift of communication
©2009 ACE Centre Advisory Trust, Charity No 1040868, Registered Company No 2961300
How does she do that?
If you have up to four symbols on a communication chart, it's usually relatively easy to work out which one an eye-pointing person is looking at. But what if there are eight, sixteen or even more communication symbols? Color encoding makes an individual symbol selectable with just two distinct eye-movements! Here's how:
Here's a chart with sixteen symbols. The one we want to eye-point to is indicated by the hand.
1) Eye-point to the blue circle
This indicates that the symbol we want is in the lower right block of four symbols.
2) Eye-point to the red circle
This indicates that the symbol we want is outlined in red.
To avoid confusion, Tamsin has a 'choosing look', where she looks back to the centre of the chart after every eye-pointing movement.