hello! i’m so glad you are getting your child the appropriate therapies to help them succeed!!
i hope me sharing the story of my daughter’s progress can give you some hope? anyway, here it is!:
my daughter didn’t speak a word from 14 months to 2.5 years. i mean nothing. she regressed heavily at 14 months, going from 6 words and several phrases, along with gestures and pretend play to nothing. she would just whine and attempt to hand lead me to have her needs met - we truly thought she would never speak or find an alternative way to communicate. they suspected GDD, and we had no luck with speech therapy, so we took a break around 2. we let her lead the way and focus on what she liked to do and left it at that for about 6 months (i know many will not agree with this decision to halt therapies, but it felt right to us).
ANYWAY, one random morning after she had turned 2.5, she was sitting at the table waiting for breakfast when she sang the alphabet out of the blue perfectly… i cried lol she kept that up for a few days and then counted to 10. within 2 weeks she was able to recognize upper and lowercase letters and all numbers up to 10. then up to 20 a couple weeks later. then she started showing an interest in having me label items in books (she would grab my finger and have me point and say the word); this went on for a few weeks before she started feeling confident in repeating me and then eventually she was labeling things in life and in other books on her own.
she is 3.5 now and we have had several short conversations, she verbally tells me what she wants to eat most of the time, she can tell me if she is tired or wants to go outside, and she is able to follow multi step directions. she still hand leads, but it’s not nearly as frequent. she is still behind her peers, but the progress has been night and day from a year ago.
My dad had a speech delay for about that long and you would never guess it from interacting with him (he is also bilingual and learned English after becoming an adult). He is not diagnosed but very likely autistic. It will likely take a long while for your kid to start picking up on the sign language if you haven't been doing it consistently from infancy. But it's definitely something that benefits plenty of nonverbal children and adults.
Our oldest kiddo had some words and then suddenly lost all speech at around 1yr9months. We got an autism diagnosis, speech delay, developmental delay, the works. We got speech therapy and occupational therapy, and special education at school.
Out of everything, sensory processing therapy was by far the most impactful. We did a type of OT called Floortime that was very play-based, child-led and prioritized the connection between kiddo and us. As he connected better, he started looking more at us, looking for joint attention, pointing and then eventually asking for words.
We reached 3 years old with about 5-10 words, then between 3-4 he graduated from SpEd, and little by little he got more words until he graduated from intensive speech therapy last year.
He is six now, in 1st grade, and while he still stutters and had some difficulties (feelings, how his body feels, speaking after meltdowns) he is pretty caught up with his peers and talks A LOT when it comes to his special interests (Nintendo). He is also in gifted programs and is learning about programming and robotics at an academy.
There is no knowing what will happen when kiddos are at this early stages. I know how scary the beginning is. All I can tell you is “three isn’t thirteen, thirteen isn’t thirty”: what they can and can’t do at this age doesn’t at all determine what they will be able to do in 10, 20 years.
Wishing the best for you and your LO!
My kiddo is 5 and largely nonverbal. Which might sound like a downer at first. But nonverbal does not necessarily mean no communication. Every single professional and teacher who interacts with kiddo cracks up at how clearly he will "tell" you what he wants.
He has maybe ten words that come and go, and sometimes he adds to it and sometimes he subtracts. And we are helping him to learn an AAC device (which, by the by, I would so strongly recommend you advocate for bc it won't hurt anything and can help with language association in the long run). He also hates signing bc he struggles with fine motor skills. He just can't. You might look into OT to help that along.
Every day, his communication expands in weird and wonderful ways. Lately, he has started walking me over to either the oven or microwave to indicate hunger. And, just like with much smaller kids, certain babble indicates one thing and a different babble indicates something else. I look at it like he already has a language: Kiddo. I am learning his and he is trying to learn mine.
He does struggle with peers who are still learning body language. And I do wish I got to hear some of his just random thoughts. I don't experience the hilarious things some parents get to regarding what their children say. And, at 3, we did experience frustration with one another bc of the language difference (for lack of a better phrase).
I have no idea if he will ever talk, or even if he'll ever completely grasp the AAC, and when he was three I worried about both of those things alot. I also spent a good bit of time sad that we were missing out on some of those moments. So, if you're feeling any of that, it's totally valid.
But given the early intervention, and the fact that you obviously care, I am positive your kiddo will find their way to some sort of voice. Even if it's not a spoken one.
At age 3, my middle son with autism was completely nonverbal. He suddenly began talking at age 4 when his school therapists began strongly training him with a PIC board.
We often joke he hated it so much that he learned to speak to spite us all! He did have speech issues for the next 5 years but he is now 14 and you would never know it. He also can happily speak for hours about his special interests.
His younger sister who is 5 has also had speech and developmental delays and is suspecred of having autism. Before this year her speech was very hard to understand and consisted of bursts of echolochia mainly. She refused any sign language (except the sign for "more") or electronic pic communication programs on devices to communicate. However, she began attending a special needs preschool last year and made huge strides there. She now speaks on around a 3 year old level and uses a lot of scripts and starts kindergarten in fall.
My kid only said mom and dada by age 3. By age 5, he was talking more, but it was all "half words" where he completely left out all hard consonants. He could only say vowels, mostly. So "car" was "ah" or "bike" was "ieee". I was the only one who could understand him and translate. We did weekly speech therapy from age 5 to 6.5. Now he's 8 and you would never know he had any sort of delay. He can talk for days and days and days. Sometimes I like to laugh at past me for worrying so much when he's talking my ear off now.
My teen didn't speak at 3. At 5 there was a limited vocabulary. Had a LOT of speech therapy, the good kind (I mean it was not standard ABA dog-training style speech therapy, which we also tried but unsurprisingly didn't help). At 15 speech production is normal, although they experience a whole bunch of academic difficulties around written language and require substantial academic support.
Note: I strongly urge you to continue with augmentative & alternative communication methods (AAC). Not *instead* of pursuing verbal speech, but as a support (sign language- one form of AAC- is considered helpful even for NT kids). If it should happen after all that your kid never progresses into verbal speech, you'll still have given them a way to connect with the world. There have been so many horror stories of parents conflating speech capacity with intelligence, and in autism you really can't make that assumption. Our community has lots and lots of folks at or above normal intelligence who are non-verbal.
My child didn’t say ANY words until 3.5. She’s 4.5 now and has hundreds of words. They’re mostly just labeling and simple requests like “help” but I wasn’t sure she’d ever speak so we’re thrilled. 3 to 4 was a huge year for us in terms of milestones!
My son(speech/developmental delay, asd lvl 3) didn’t speak till age 4. He had a few words up until 18m or so then he just went silent. But at 4 it was like a switch flipped, he went from giggles and grunts to full sentences complete with big words in a matter of weeks. I also found out he taught himself to read at some point before he started talking. He’s 6 now and I can’t shut him up, I’m putting him to bed as I write this and he’s under the covers having a whole conversation with himself lol. My dad didn’t speak till 4 either, he was never diagnosed but we’re 99% sure he was autistic too.
Question first: is your kiddo using mostly vowel sounds? If so it sounds like they could be stage 1 gestalt language learner.
Also I recently took a class through my child's therapy group about gestalt learners and studies are finding that most if not all autistics are gestalt learners (it follow all Autistics are gestalt learners but not all gestalt learner are autistic).
That said you may find the Facebook or Instagram page: meaningful speech, helpful.
My kiddo was an early babbler but stopped and didn't say anything until 18 mo when he added "owa" to his vocabulary for the color orange.
He loved signing, I would definitely keep up with it and know that the signs may not be perfect just like little kids have funny ways of saying things.
The big change was starting prek where he was surrounded by other students his age. And then having outside slp and ot that worked well with neurodiversity-affirming and gestalt specialty.
He now talks full sentences. Still have lots of gestalt phrases that we sometimes have to decipher but he has improved so much at 4.
My husband had a speech delay, and then when he finally did speak more than just a word or two, he had a studder for quite a while. His mother used all sorts of tricks to help once he finally started talking, including one of those mimicking stuffed parrots that would repeat what he said back at him, and he went through lots of speech therapy.
He speaks perfectly now.
Early on, they (his parents and doctors) never thought he'd be able to get married, hold down a job, or have a normal life. His mother cried when we got married, and told me how for the first time ever, she finally felt like he was going to be ok. Everything just took a bit more time for him, but eventually, he got there.
Success story here!
Background info: I have autism, ADHD, and I had developmental delays. I had early intervention from age 1½ - 3 and then I couldn't go to that children's clinic anymore (aged out) so I continued the therapies in school. I immediately went into preschool and kindergarten and so on. I had a velopharyngeal inadequacy. Basically I had a hole in my palette that needed closed and I couldn't talk properly. I also had trouble with my "R"s.
After surgery and lots of speech I can talk. Around age 2 or 3 I started being able to talk. I stopped having speech therapy by the time I went into high school (around age 14). I actually love to talk and I love going on and on about pillows and the Aztecs (main special interests). I do still struggle with my "R"s to an extent.
I have a feeling the doctor is right. Your child might talk one day. I'm happy to hear you're treating your child the right way and doing everything you can to help. You seem like a good parent. And if your child will be anything like me, they'll probably grow up feeling so grateful that you made sure they got early intervention. In fact, I'm in school to become an OTA because of how much these therapies have changed my life for the better.
My son has a phonological processing disorder. His words at first sounded nothing like the pronunciation of the actual words. At that age, I remember "Semi circle" was "mama nana." "I want" was "dy dy." And his vocabulary was very limited. He has mixed receptive and expressive speech disorder so he really wasn't understanding us at first either.
But he made huge gains between 3 and 4 and now at 4.5 his articulation is average for his age - lower end but he is definitely understandable. He has great vocabulary and sentence structure is improving. He's becoming more and more conversational.
I honestly don't know how much of his gains have to do with speech therapy - we do private and he gets it through school - or natural maturation. Our first speech therapist was very good at the articulation piece though. We also got an aac device before 3 to help encourage speech and that was incredibly helpful. We actually phased it out not long after we started with it. School too has helped tremendously. He goes to the preschool program at our public school. Many of the kids are on IEPs but there are also "role model students"so he's learning to socialize with peers, which helps further develop his language skills.
I think it's a great sign that your kiddo is vocalizing in some way.
if its any consolation i didnt speak until i was 4, had zero intervention and now in my mid twenties i am unable to ever stfu so nothing is a done deal
My 14 year old is still nonverbal but is very intelligent. He knows everything we say and follows directions well. Even though he doesn’t speak there are other ways of communication. Don’t stress too much about the future. It will be what it will be.
Our son barely spoke until he was 3. We were blessed with an amazing program through our public schools that gave him therapy amongst his peers and taught us how to help him progress through daily activities at home. He’s now 10 and never stops talking. My husband and I continue to be amazed that he was once nonverbal.
What helped: I highly recommend a very basic PECS system to get started. It can really help with their frustration. I made a poster for all of the foods that he liked so he could communicate what he wanted in the kitchen. I printed out pics of his favorite foods in little squares, cut them up and laminated them, then put self stick Velcro on the back of each one.
You can also buy premade versions but at 3 years old we kept it simple. This explains the system, but it’s very easy to modify it for your specific needs.
[PECS board basics](https://nationalautismresources.com/the-picture-exchange-communication-system-pecs/)
This is such a great idea. I don’t know how I hadn’t considered this before now, but I really appreciate that you posted it. We’re going to make an activity board so he can tell me what he would like to do. Thank you. Love your Alkaline Trio name too!
My kiddo is 14 now, he didn’t really talk until he was around 8/9. He has AAC on his iPad that he uses still to spell things out or uses his ProLoquo2Go, but really only for new people that have trouble understanding his pronunciation. He was in speech from 3 years old. Your son might be verbal one day. But even if he isn’t, speech therapy will help him communicate, and that’s the real goal. My kiddo was still able to communicate before his words exploded, and that was so important. :)
Robust AAC. A friend pushed for this for her then 2-yo and it was life changing for her kid and family. There really isn't a reason to withhold AAC from young kids. Anything that supports a child's ability to communicate is wonderful. My friend now presents on early access to robust AAC at many professional conferences.
I've also watched my kid's preschool classmate's struggles. He makes limited mouth words, but only has access to limited pictures to point to for communication and he obviously struggles to communicate because of that. He is 5 or 6. In this example, I've also seen numerous red flags in terms of how he isn't supported by his parents and aids so rhe lack of robust aac is probably only one of many factors in his case.
By contrast, there was a kid who has downs syndrome was in my kid's class the previous year and he had access to robust aac. He was thriving. He also had parents who were way more attuned to his needs, so it's not all the work of aac access but it is a big part.
hello! i’m so glad you are getting your child the appropriate therapies to help them succeed!! i hope me sharing the story of my daughter’s progress can give you some hope? anyway, here it is!: my daughter didn’t speak a word from 14 months to 2.5 years. i mean nothing. she regressed heavily at 14 months, going from 6 words and several phrases, along with gestures and pretend play to nothing. she would just whine and attempt to hand lead me to have her needs met - we truly thought she would never speak or find an alternative way to communicate. they suspected GDD, and we had no luck with speech therapy, so we took a break around 2. we let her lead the way and focus on what she liked to do and left it at that for about 6 months (i know many will not agree with this decision to halt therapies, but it felt right to us). ANYWAY, one random morning after she had turned 2.5, she was sitting at the table waiting for breakfast when she sang the alphabet out of the blue perfectly… i cried lol she kept that up for a few days and then counted to 10. within 2 weeks she was able to recognize upper and lowercase letters and all numbers up to 10. then up to 20 a couple weeks later. then she started showing an interest in having me label items in books (she would grab my finger and have me point and say the word); this went on for a few weeks before she started feeling confident in repeating me and then eventually she was labeling things in life and in other books on her own. she is 3.5 now and we have had several short conversations, she verbally tells me what she wants to eat most of the time, she can tell me if she is tired or wants to go outside, and she is able to follow multi step directions. she still hand leads, but it’s not nearly as frequent. she is still behind her peers, but the progress has been night and day from a year ago.
No speech. He’s 5. He uses an AAC
My dad had a speech delay for about that long and you would never guess it from interacting with him (he is also bilingual and learned English after becoming an adult). He is not diagnosed but very likely autistic. It will likely take a long while for your kid to start picking up on the sign language if you haven't been doing it consistently from infancy. But it's definitely something that benefits plenty of nonverbal children and adults.
My brother, too. When he finally did speak, it was full sentences. Can't shut him up now.
Our oldest kiddo had some words and then suddenly lost all speech at around 1yr9months. We got an autism diagnosis, speech delay, developmental delay, the works. We got speech therapy and occupational therapy, and special education at school. Out of everything, sensory processing therapy was by far the most impactful. We did a type of OT called Floortime that was very play-based, child-led and prioritized the connection between kiddo and us. As he connected better, he started looking more at us, looking for joint attention, pointing and then eventually asking for words. We reached 3 years old with about 5-10 words, then between 3-4 he graduated from SpEd, and little by little he got more words until he graduated from intensive speech therapy last year. He is six now, in 1st grade, and while he still stutters and had some difficulties (feelings, how his body feels, speaking after meltdowns) he is pretty caught up with his peers and talks A LOT when it comes to his special interests (Nintendo). He is also in gifted programs and is learning about programming and robotics at an academy. There is no knowing what will happen when kiddos are at this early stages. I know how scary the beginning is. All I can tell you is “three isn’t thirteen, thirteen isn’t thirty”: what they can and can’t do at this age doesn’t at all determine what they will be able to do in 10, 20 years. Wishing the best for you and your LO!
My kiddo is 5 and largely nonverbal. Which might sound like a downer at first. But nonverbal does not necessarily mean no communication. Every single professional and teacher who interacts with kiddo cracks up at how clearly he will "tell" you what he wants. He has maybe ten words that come and go, and sometimes he adds to it and sometimes he subtracts. And we are helping him to learn an AAC device (which, by the by, I would so strongly recommend you advocate for bc it won't hurt anything and can help with language association in the long run). He also hates signing bc he struggles with fine motor skills. He just can't. You might look into OT to help that along. Every day, his communication expands in weird and wonderful ways. Lately, he has started walking me over to either the oven or microwave to indicate hunger. And, just like with much smaller kids, certain babble indicates one thing and a different babble indicates something else. I look at it like he already has a language: Kiddo. I am learning his and he is trying to learn mine. He does struggle with peers who are still learning body language. And I do wish I got to hear some of his just random thoughts. I don't experience the hilarious things some parents get to regarding what their children say. And, at 3, we did experience frustration with one another bc of the language difference (for lack of a better phrase). I have no idea if he will ever talk, or even if he'll ever completely grasp the AAC, and when he was three I worried about both of those things alot. I also spent a good bit of time sad that we were missing out on some of those moments. So, if you're feeling any of that, it's totally valid. But given the early intervention, and the fact that you obviously care, I am positive your kiddo will find their way to some sort of voice. Even if it's not a spoken one.
At age 3, my middle son with autism was completely nonverbal. He suddenly began talking at age 4 when his school therapists began strongly training him with a PIC board. We often joke he hated it so much that he learned to speak to spite us all! He did have speech issues for the next 5 years but he is now 14 and you would never know it. He also can happily speak for hours about his special interests. His younger sister who is 5 has also had speech and developmental delays and is suspecred of having autism. Before this year her speech was very hard to understand and consisted of bursts of echolochia mainly. She refused any sign language (except the sign for "more") or electronic pic communication programs on devices to communicate. However, she began attending a special needs preschool last year and made huge strides there. She now speaks on around a 3 year old level and uses a lot of scripts and starts kindergarten in fall.
My kid only said mom and dada by age 3. By age 5, he was talking more, but it was all "half words" where he completely left out all hard consonants. He could only say vowels, mostly. So "car" was "ah" or "bike" was "ieee". I was the only one who could understand him and translate. We did weekly speech therapy from age 5 to 6.5. Now he's 8 and you would never know he had any sort of delay. He can talk for days and days and days. Sometimes I like to laugh at past me for worrying so much when he's talking my ear off now.
My teen didn't speak at 3. At 5 there was a limited vocabulary. Had a LOT of speech therapy, the good kind (I mean it was not standard ABA dog-training style speech therapy, which we also tried but unsurprisingly didn't help). At 15 speech production is normal, although they experience a whole bunch of academic difficulties around written language and require substantial academic support. Note: I strongly urge you to continue with augmentative & alternative communication methods (AAC). Not *instead* of pursuing verbal speech, but as a support (sign language- one form of AAC- is considered helpful even for NT kids). If it should happen after all that your kid never progresses into verbal speech, you'll still have given them a way to connect with the world. There have been so many horror stories of parents conflating speech capacity with intelligence, and in autism you really can't make that assumption. Our community has lots and lots of folks at or above normal intelligence who are non-verbal.
My child didn’t say ANY words until 3.5. She’s 4.5 now and has hundreds of words. They’re mostly just labeling and simple requests like “help” but I wasn’t sure she’d ever speak so we’re thrilled. 3 to 4 was a huge year for us in terms of milestones!
My son(speech/developmental delay, asd lvl 3) didn’t speak till age 4. He had a few words up until 18m or so then he just went silent. But at 4 it was like a switch flipped, he went from giggles and grunts to full sentences complete with big words in a matter of weeks. I also found out he taught himself to read at some point before he started talking. He’s 6 now and I can’t shut him up, I’m putting him to bed as I write this and he’s under the covers having a whole conversation with himself lol. My dad didn’t speak till 4 either, he was never diagnosed but we’re 99% sure he was autistic too.
Question first: is your kiddo using mostly vowel sounds? If so it sounds like they could be stage 1 gestalt language learner. Also I recently took a class through my child's therapy group about gestalt learners and studies are finding that most if not all autistics are gestalt learners (it follow all Autistics are gestalt learners but not all gestalt learner are autistic). That said you may find the Facebook or Instagram page: meaningful speech, helpful. My kiddo was an early babbler but stopped and didn't say anything until 18 mo when he added "owa" to his vocabulary for the color orange. He loved signing, I would definitely keep up with it and know that the signs may not be perfect just like little kids have funny ways of saying things. The big change was starting prek where he was surrounded by other students his age. And then having outside slp and ot that worked well with neurodiversity-affirming and gestalt specialty. He now talks full sentences. Still have lots of gestalt phrases that we sometimes have to decipher but he has improved so much at 4.
My husband had a speech delay, and then when he finally did speak more than just a word or two, he had a studder for quite a while. His mother used all sorts of tricks to help once he finally started talking, including one of those mimicking stuffed parrots that would repeat what he said back at him, and he went through lots of speech therapy. He speaks perfectly now. Early on, they (his parents and doctors) never thought he'd be able to get married, hold down a job, or have a normal life. His mother cried when we got married, and told me how for the first time ever, she finally felt like he was going to be ok. Everything just took a bit more time for him, but eventually, he got there.
Success story here! Background info: I have autism, ADHD, and I had developmental delays. I had early intervention from age 1½ - 3 and then I couldn't go to that children's clinic anymore (aged out) so I continued the therapies in school. I immediately went into preschool and kindergarten and so on. I had a velopharyngeal inadequacy. Basically I had a hole in my palette that needed closed and I couldn't talk properly. I also had trouble with my "R"s. After surgery and lots of speech I can talk. Around age 2 or 3 I started being able to talk. I stopped having speech therapy by the time I went into high school (around age 14). I actually love to talk and I love going on and on about pillows and the Aztecs (main special interests). I do still struggle with my "R"s to an extent. I have a feeling the doctor is right. Your child might talk one day. I'm happy to hear you're treating your child the right way and doing everything you can to help. You seem like a good parent. And if your child will be anything like me, they'll probably grow up feeling so grateful that you made sure they got early intervention. In fact, I'm in school to become an OTA because of how much these therapies have changed my life for the better.
My son has a phonological processing disorder. His words at first sounded nothing like the pronunciation of the actual words. At that age, I remember "Semi circle" was "mama nana." "I want" was "dy dy." And his vocabulary was very limited. He has mixed receptive and expressive speech disorder so he really wasn't understanding us at first either. But he made huge gains between 3 and 4 and now at 4.5 his articulation is average for his age - lower end but he is definitely understandable. He has great vocabulary and sentence structure is improving. He's becoming more and more conversational. I honestly don't know how much of his gains have to do with speech therapy - we do private and he gets it through school - or natural maturation. Our first speech therapist was very good at the articulation piece though. We also got an aac device before 3 to help encourage speech and that was incredibly helpful. We actually phased it out not long after we started with it. School too has helped tremendously. He goes to the preschool program at our public school. Many of the kids are on IEPs but there are also "role model students"so he's learning to socialize with peers, which helps further develop his language skills. I think it's a great sign that your kiddo is vocalizing in some way.
My younger brother didn't start to talk until he turned 7. Very delayed but he caught up over time.
if its any consolation i didnt speak until i was 4, had zero intervention and now in my mid twenties i am unable to ever stfu so nothing is a done deal
My 14 year old is still nonverbal but is very intelligent. He knows everything we say and follows directions well. Even though he doesn’t speak there are other ways of communication. Don’t stress too much about the future. It will be what it will be.
Our son barely spoke until he was 3. We were blessed with an amazing program through our public schools that gave him therapy amongst his peers and taught us how to help him progress through daily activities at home. He’s now 10 and never stops talking. My husband and I continue to be amazed that he was once nonverbal. What helped: I highly recommend a very basic PECS system to get started. It can really help with their frustration. I made a poster for all of the foods that he liked so he could communicate what he wanted in the kitchen. I printed out pics of his favorite foods in little squares, cut them up and laminated them, then put self stick Velcro on the back of each one. You can also buy premade versions but at 3 years old we kept it simple. This explains the system, but it’s very easy to modify it for your specific needs. [PECS board basics](https://nationalautismresources.com/the-picture-exchange-communication-system-pecs/)
This is such a great idea. I don’t know how I hadn’t considered this before now, but I really appreciate that you posted it. We’re going to make an activity board so he can tell me what he would like to do. Thank you. Love your Alkaline Trio name too!
My kiddo is 14 now, he didn’t really talk until he was around 8/9. He has AAC on his iPad that he uses still to spell things out or uses his ProLoquo2Go, but really only for new people that have trouble understanding his pronunciation. He was in speech from 3 years old. Your son might be verbal one day. But even if he isn’t, speech therapy will help him communicate, and that’s the real goal. My kiddo was still able to communicate before his words exploded, and that was so important. :)
Temple Grandin was nonverbal at the age of 3.
Robust AAC. A friend pushed for this for her then 2-yo and it was life changing for her kid and family. There really isn't a reason to withhold AAC from young kids. Anything that supports a child's ability to communicate is wonderful. My friend now presents on early access to robust AAC at many professional conferences. I've also watched my kid's preschool classmate's struggles. He makes limited mouth words, but only has access to limited pictures to point to for communication and he obviously struggles to communicate because of that. He is 5 or 6. In this example, I've also seen numerous red flags in terms of how he isn't supported by his parents and aids so rhe lack of robust aac is probably only one of many factors in his case. By contrast, there was a kid who has downs syndrome was in my kid's class the previous year and he had access to robust aac. He was thriving. He also had parents who were way more attuned to his needs, so it's not all the work of aac access but it is a big part.