My son Caoimh, now in his early 20s, was born in 2003.

 

By the time Caoimh was 10, I had thrown off what I’d been told about him by clinicians and teachers since his autism diagnosis at age 2.

 

While Caoimh clearly had fine motor challenges – to the point that speaking and handwriting were beyond his reach – I no longer believed that he was “severely intellectually disabled”, or that he was barely able to understand even basic language.

 

In 2014, when Caoimh was 11, I found a way to teach him how to spell to communicate. After getting some instruction in the Rapid Prompting Method (RPM) from practitioners visiting Ireland, I proceeded to work with Caoimh using my own customised version of RPM. (Five years later, in 2020, we moved to S2C with its rigorously replicable guidelines as our ongoing method of choice.)

 

Caoimh reached full open communication at the age of 12, having practised on his letterboards most days for 18 months.

 

At last Caoimh could communicate whatever he wanted to say. He could demonstrate linguistic and mathematical ability that was age-appropriate and higher – despite being deemed by professionals to have what they called “severe low-functioning autism” and kept up till then at toddler-level academic education in school.

 

I no longer use the devaluing, dehumanising, pessimistic, archaic and inaccurate language of “severe and low-functioning" to define my son.

 

Instead I describe Caoimh as kind, loving, linguistic, poetic, deep, sensitive, funny, brave and honest. He also happens to have motor-sensory differences and to be dyspraxic/apraxic (ie, he has a brain-body disconnect that impacts his co-ordination).

 

These issues, alongside complex medical diagnoses – including epilepsy – mean that alongside everything else that Caoimh is, he’s also an autistic person with high support needs.

 

Caoimh, his dad Dara and the rest of our family think that learning how to spell to communicate is by far the most important of the many therapeutic and educational interventions we’ve ever tried for Caoimh.

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Caoimh’s non-family member S2C Practitioner and CRP is Anna Lechleiter. Anna is an I-ASC faculty member, owner of www.palz.ie, and stalwart advocate and friend to both Caoimh and to me.

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Access to communication through language continues to massively enhance Caoimh’s well-being and the well-being of our family.

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• Watch Anna CRPing for Caoimh for a conference video presentation, here.

• Watch a talk given by Caoimh and me about our communication journey, here.

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