I’m fascinated with theories of language acquisition, because one of my kids was mute due to autism. He talks now. He actually talks quite well. No accents. No modulation problems. No studders. His pragmatic speech needs work. Pragmatic speech is the ability to say the appropriate things at the right time and to talk about a wide range of topics. It’s closely related to social skills.

Yesterday, we waited in the lobby of the JCC  for the shuttle bus that takes him to the daycamp location. An elderly woman slowly shuffled into the center. She leaned on her walker and made a couple of steps here and there. Ian shouted to her in cheerful voice, “Hey, Old Lady. Do you need some help?” Sweet, but not appropriate. On the plus side, he noticed things in the greater environment, he showed empathy, he attempted interaction, and he quickly accepted a correction from me that elderly people should not be addressed as “Old Lady.”

Ian has done much, much better than his peers who also had speech delays at that early age coupled with autism. In general, the prognosis for those kids are not good. Ian’s other issues are relatively mild and he has a high IQ, so that helped him out quite a bit. I also think that some things we did at home helped.

Slate has an article about an old PBS documentary about the evolution of speech. Here’s a clip of the movie.

http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9?isVid=1&isUI=1