Just a quick link really for this post, from the Speak for Yourself blog. They make the point that typical children are given at least 2 years before they’re expected to combine words, whereas children given AAC devices are often expected to produce sentence quickly. They then go on to talk about it being better to have to combine words yourself rather than use pre-programmed phrases (I agree with their comments on the whole btw, even if the occasional pre-programmed phrase does no harm, on the whole I think it is better to learn to produce those phrases from single words).
I wanted to add to this my observation that Archie really did need some time just using his device at a single word level. He has explored the device himself, he is now very familiar with it & with that familiarity he has begun to produce more complicated phrases. I’ve been struck by how typical his language development with the device has been, when compared to the speech development of his two younger brothers. He went from single words to comfortably combining two words to longer phrases – now they can be very long indeed. He’s also made corrections, so whereas ‘not’ always used to appear at the end of a sentence it’s now, more often than not, found in the correct place. None of this has been achieved with intensive therapy, his development has taken a very natural course – the vantage lite just providing him with the voice to do that.
A Life Unlimited 
It’s fantastic that Archie’s development has taken a natural course…. this is also my approach. Thank goodness for AAC. Nick is still only tapping out one word on his lightwriter/iPad, but what has blown me away is that he is now starting to actually sound out the letters for a word. I know I am being OTT but I just can’t get over that he can now say “c..ar”! Does Archie have any sounds at all?
Not OTT at all!That’s fabulous 🙂 Archie has very limited sounds. He had quite a few prior to his regression (so we have video of him saying sssss with snake and qua- qua- qua- with a duck and ‘ka’ for caterpillar etc – all sounds he cannot now say). He has an almost complete absence of back of the throat sounds – kuh guh etc and he can’t produce the more complex front of mouth ones – eg ‘juh’ would probably be ‘duh’. So very limited. He is vocalising more with the vantage though and it seems to be helping him expan is repertoire a bit.