Giving a voice to the non-speaking child through AAC (Augmentative & Alternative Communication) intervention
“Very happy to collaborate with Subodha, my son has been able to make a significant improvement in his expressive language and is now able to use his AAC across various communicative contexts throughout the day”
–Mitul Sen, Special educator & mother to Ashmit, 14 years, New Delhi
“Sanjith is a non-speaking autistic kid. We started using an AAC App a while ago but it was mostly limited to requesting for breakfast, lunch & dinner. We couldn’t take it any further. I came in touch with Subodha through Facebook. We started online sessions with Subodha and boom!! Anjana, our therapist introduced navigation on the AAC system through customising different folders, facilitated language through games, conversations, shared writing, making up poems, stories and more!! A boy who was almost written off for being non-vocal has now presented at a conference by autistic individuals. He is being noticed by kids in our community and his ability to communicate better has helped him regulate himself better than before. We are happy to be able to converse, play and have fun together. All thanks to Subodha.”
–Prashanti Vankamamidi, mother to Sanjith, 13 years, Hyderabad.
Photo by Susanne Jutzeler, suju-foto on Pexels.com
There’s no one size fits all intervention, Subodha uses a child-centric approach
“We have had multiple speech therapists and were never satisfied. After we got started at Subodha, we did not have to look any further. Our therapist Anjana’s greatest strength is her structured approach, empathy and patience. She is the only speech therapist we could really trust as she understands our child. Our son likes the online sessions with her and we have seen a drastic improvement in our child’s speech and confidence”.
A specialist, different approach for children with echolalia
“After Leira acquired very basic speech, we noticed a stagnancy and her speech never progressed beyond words like “I want+ noun”(very few nouns, mostly mands for food). She would also use words and phrases but without context or meaning. We approached Subodha and Anjana, our therapist could pin point that Leira is a gestalt learner (learning language in chunks) and possibly that was the reason why she was not able to typically combine words. Based on our therapist’s input, we customized AAC to break up the existing phrases into words and recombining them and at the same time exposed her to many words multimodally. Now her language has picked up and has extended to small phrases with 2 to 3 words and she looks a lot more confident and happier.”
–Catherine Figarado, Mother to Leira, 8 years, Cochin
Age-appropriate Neurodiversity-Affirming Intervention for teenagers
“Things I like and appreciate about Subodha’s approach of communication intervention for my son:
Giving space and time for him to respond, giving choices while communicating at this point actually enhances his self confidence to express freely.
Giving importance/adding value to all his verbal and nonverbal expressions reinforces his self esteem.
Through your sessions, I gained some insights about my son, for example it was the first time I heard him express during your session that he wanted to become famous by setting a record in swimming and that he wants us to have topic related conversations and not small talk!
He is able to express himself by typing without prompts through ur video conversations.
My son feels the AAC App and you are helping him communicate better.
He sensed the trust and respect you hold for him. I am thankful”
-Kalpana, mother to Bharath, 18 years old, Tiruvannamalai, Tamil Nadu
“I am thankful for offering online sessions to Krishna. You touched upon many concepts, topics and challenges which I really wanted to help Krishna with and this was possible as you understood the exact problems he was experiencing in his social communication. The homework and follow-up were very helpful too”.
-Ashwini, mother to Krishna, 11 years, Solapur, Maharashtra
“Knowing how important communication is for anyone and all the more for someone on the spectrum, I have approached Subodha for the same to help my son. Following the assessment itself, the therapist gave me clarity on their approach towards communication which aligned with my thoughts. She gives me new ideas on how to generalise communication goals and how to go about it. Not only that, she puts my son at ease during the session, giving him enough time to respond and encouragement to express himself.
“We approached ‘Subodha’ to improve pronunciation and speaking language skills for our Kid. Our therapist Anjana worked patiently with my kid and designed a custom course schedule and worked closely with my kid. Working with Anjana helped our kid to improve her speaking language skills. My kid enjoys the sessions, we appreciate her dedication and patience in bringing improvements to our kid’s speech and language skills.”
-Sriram Kosuri, father to Vibha, 14 years, Seattle, USA
Parent Coaching Experience at Subodha
I can’t stress enough on the importance of an SLP coaching the parent in the right direction to work with the child. Often, at most places, the parent is asked to wait outside the therapy room and is left clueless about what goes on in the session. The child does not make much headway in this process. At Subodha, our SLP makes sure the parents understand the goals clearly and suggests numerous ways to achieve them which is mostly based on the child’s interests and skills. Our therapist also shares learning material for parents to educate themselves and understand their children better. She draws ideas from her rich experience of working with children with varied communication challenges.
What sets apart Anjana, our therapist at Subodha is her approach of asking the parents for their priorities for their child’s communication. The parent could focus on specific areas like expressing emotions/pain, dealing with bullying or reading comprehension. She collects as much data about the child before the session and comes up with a robust list of approaches to address these focus areas. She is also open to exploring alternate ideas shared by the parents. The parent coaching sessions led by Anjana are very informative and packed with easy to implement methods to enhance the child’s receptive and expressive communication. She emphasizes multimodal communication and helps with various ways to use text, pictures, books, typing, mouth words effectively. She stays abreast with the latest research in AAC, communication difficulties, neurodiversity and upgrades herself with training and webinars from subject matter experts. I am ever grateful to her for all the support and guidance!
A student’s testimonial on speech clarity work and multimodal communication
“I met Anjana, from Subodha in 2018. She provided virtual speech therapy to me. She started with letter & word formation for me.. My voice was very feeble & words came out gibberish but with her help and techniques given by her I was able to speak more clearly & loudly. She helped me with more complex language too.. giving me tools & techniques eg. describe the event, steps of recipes as I am very fond of cooking. Best part she includes Meditation with speech therapy. I communicate using keyboard but she taught me importance of spoken words.With strategies given by her now I try to focus more on my verbal expression too. Thanks to Subodha for all your support. Keep doing the great work and helping other kids.”
Reach Subodha 