Aaron's Future Communication

I follow a blog called Kreed's World: A Complex Journey Through Autism. It's a blog by a mother of an amazing adorable teenage boy named Kreed who has severe autism and a host of other medical problems. It's heartbreaking what he is going through, but I love to follow the blog because he and his mom touch my heart and I truly care about what happens to them.
Kreed's mother posted a link to something the other day...I'll get in to that in a second. Apparently a while back Kreed had a year of "rage", he was very aggressive and self injurious and because he is non-verbal no one could figure out why. Turns out he was in major pain. Kreed has a very cool AAC device called a DynaVox T10 that he uses to communicate and I'm not sure if it was through this device or another, but by finding and providing Kreed with a means to communicate something so basic, they were finally able to determine the source of his aggression and get him some help.
The link that Kreed's mother posted was to point out how important communication is to the non-verbal child/teenager/adult and if enough isn't done to achieve it something tragic can happen. As she so eloquently stated, "It's one thing for a five year old to hit you and another thing for a 16 year old to hit you."
16? I can't even imagine....

Here's the link to the news story, it's too terrible for me to try to describe:
http://www.theprovince.com/touch/story.html?id=9768605

Aaron's patience is very finite. You can't pile on too much at once or he will want nothing to do with it anymore. We bought him an iPad mini almost a year ago and only about a week ago did he show any interest in it. I have been thinking lately if we had to focus on one thing to make Aaron's life more productive what would it be? After reading this story, I believe it would be getting Aaron to communicate with an AAC device. No matter how hard we have to try. It doesn't have to be too in depth. As long as he can communicate his basic needs I think he will see how good of a thing it is for him and want to learn more. He needs to be able to tell us when he is in pain and he has no way to do that now other than to become very aggressive. A lot of things make him aggressive (hunger, thirst, too hot, too cold, overstimulation, etc) so it's hard to determine what the aggression is from. This especially needs to happen and be in place before puberty sets in.

I would never, ever resort to what this mother in Canada did, but I could never imagine the desperation she must have felt and I can't help but agree with some commenters that if she had been given the support she needed to care for her son things may have turned out differently. I hope they are both at peace now, especially her son.

My husband and I both agree that getting Aaron to communicate with an AAC device is the way to go as far as a main focus. We have to. He is so smart, there is no way he wouldn't pick it up. He learns sign language so easily, learns how to use his iPad apps in seconds, learns his visual schedule and a picture exchange system for asking for things with minimal instruction. I know it would work. If he's too young for it now that's fine, we communicate effectively at this time but in the next couple years I think it is something he could benefit from and the time to introduce it to him is soon. Supposedly one of his therapists is working on looking in to how to get him a device through the school or the state. I haven't heard anything in a while though. If the school can't get one we have applied for something else through the state that there is a long waiting list for that we can also get an AAC device for Aaron this way. These devices are super expensive but I know they are worth it.

Fingers crossed too, it would be really cool if in the future he became good enough at using something like this that we could have our first real conversation. That would be amazing.