Typing program - question from a friend

[Heartistsmuse]

My best friend wants to teach her son (my almost nine year old godson), to type. He has a diagnosis of autism and his communication skills are limited, due to severe apraxia (he has phrase speech but much of his communication is echoed and he was classed as non-verbal a year ago, by the district). He is not yet reading and writing, but can identify some sight words and letters of the alphabet. He can follow two and three step directions, with prompting, provided the instructions are concrete. His receptive communication, both anecdotally and per test results, is much stronger than his expressive. His fine motor is delayed, thus writing has been a real struggle for him (he is possibly dysgraphic, I believe).

His writing goals on his IEP haven’t changed in six years: they’re still emphasizing early preacademic skills, which is why my friend is eager to institute a typing program at home. He has utilized a picture based exchange program in the past, but I think my friend, (I’ll call her T, for privacy) wants him to learn to type. Additional information: he independently plays on his ipad, utilizes the remote to navigate the television and can play fairly complex games online.

I am not a parent or educator, just a hopeful friend who wants to help (I was also a special needs child myself). Is there anything you all would suggest? Is there a typing program that might be a good fit for a little boy with this profile? I am asking on her behalf, with her permission, as she is busy and I want to be a support to her and my godson (a bright, intelligent, lovable boy who I believe deserves a chance to thrive). This is my first post so I am sorry if I’m a bit awkward. Thank you for your input.

[Rosie_0801]

I don't know, but good on your friend. ?

[PeterPan]

Three things to look into.

1- PROMPT is specialized speech therapy that targets the motor planning deficits of apraxia. The mother can sue the school district and compel them to get the SLP trained or try to get funding for private therapy. It can require a drive to find (I drive over 2 hours each way weekly) and level 1 training is not adequate. The therapist really needs to have done through Bridging. 

2-Is he on some form of AAC device? LAMP has the Words for Life app, which you can use on an ipad. Even my aging ipad3 will run LAMP. There are other AAC approaches, that I really don't know anything about, that I think can fit better some situations or others. The software will include a keyboard as part of the word prediction.

3-RPM. I know there are people who think it's horrible, fine. I know people doing this in another city (not near me, near our SLP, ironically) who are doing amazing things. They use letterboards a lot. I'm not up on the logic of why letterboards instead of AAC, but there you go, another approach.

My ds is verbal with autism and apraxia. Even though our speech therapy with PROMPT has been successful, reality is it's very hard for him to get all his thoughts out. We've introduced LAMP and right now I'm making a huge push on language while our PROMPT therapist is on maternity leave. PROMPT is motor planning, but at our place expressive language (ability to get your thoughts out, what would impact that writing for school you were talking about) is separate. I'm going back and doing FFC (feature function class) and other basics with him. There's stuff he can do receptively (circling answers on the worksheets, recognizing the answer) that is really hard when you say you want him to use it actively in a sentence, kwim? 

For my ds, there really isn't a sense in which he can just write. He was scripting, but to have writing goals, well he just couldn't. That level of narrative wasn't coming out. So I think you still have that hurdle that he might need expressive language therapy, that this is a dc who should be receiving significant speech therapy services, even if he's given AAC. Even with AAC, he is still going to need help to organize and get out thoughts.