Aidan Elliott
Aidan is three years old and has Down syndrome. Aidan has been getting speech therapy since he was eight months old. When he turned three he could say approximately 25 words, but no one could understand those words except for me and my husband. In fact, many people wouldn't even recognize that Aidan was communicating because the sounds he made were through his nose or back of his throat. At home, Aidan mainly communicated with us through American Sign Language. He knows more than 250 signs! Aidan has a lot that he wants to say.
Shortly after Aidan turned 3 he started preschool. It did not take us long to realize that none of his teachers knew 250 signs to communicate with Aidan, and even if they did, many of Aidan's signs were approximations due to his poor fine motor skills. At the same time, we started with a new SLP, Ann Marie Polovick. I think that was Aidan's lucky day! Ann Marie gave us some reading material about AAC devices and she convinced us that having a device with a voice output would give Aidan independence in communicating with many people, and that it may increase his speech and language skills.
Aidan has had his SpringBoard Lite for three months now. He learned to use the device really quickly! We started with only eight symbols on the screen at a time, but now we use 32 symbols. Within a month he was being much more vocal. He has always been such a quiet kid, and we love to hear him talking! He would push a button on his device and try to repeat what he was hearing. We were amazed; all of the first words he said were a result of him repeating what he was hearing on his device. Now, he will try to vocalize almost any word you ask him to say, and he is even trying to sing along to some of his favorite songs. His words don't all come out clearly, but he has many understandable words now. He is also much more cooperative than he used to be. We use the device with all of his therapists (PT, OT, etc.), and it seems that when they let him use his device to choose an activity, then he is much more willing to participate in it. He will also tell us when he has to use the potty with his device, as well as request toys, foods, places to go, songs to sing, family members to play with and many other things. It has been an amazing transformation for us and our family, and I never would have believed all the research until I witnessed it myself.
Submitted by Aidan's mother, Jennifer Elliott
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