A THERAPIST RECALLS A MIRACULOUS BREAKTHROUGH MOMENT SHE EXPERIENCED WHEN WORKING WITH A CHILD ON THE SPECTRUM.

By Dr. Sima GERBER, PhD, CCC

Iwitnessed a miracle recently. I saw the birth of a human capacity that was sadly missing in a child with significant challenges in development. The actual miracle may sound insignificant but trust me when I say it was huge.

The boy in this story, Mikey, was five years old with two loving parents and a bright and charming eight-year-old sister. Although Mikey was delayed in every area of development, he loved his parents; he smiled at them and approached them; he spent time looking at them. He loved to run and jump; he loved to make sounds; he loved to climb and move his body.

On the other hand, he didn’t interact with other people. He didn’t express what he was thinking. He didn’t play with toys. He didn’t understand what people were saying. He didn’t talk. He wasn’t like a typical five-year-old or even two-year-old I was his speech-language therapist. Two graduate clinicians and I tried to determine what kind of developments we could facilitate that would help this boy move into a more familiar trajectory.

So, with everything I know about what it takes to become a comprehender and producer of language, I decided that the first thing Mikey needed to learn was to interact in some meaningful, intentional, purposeful way with someone else. How could we ever teach him that? After all, he hadn’t learned it yet and he was five years old.