Hearing Impairment, Language Disorder and Autism
In the interest of safeguarding, the child has been referred to as Lyle throughout the case study.
Charlotte, one of our Speech and Language Therapists has been working with Lyle since attending his transition group in the Summer of 2018 and providing intervention since February 2019. He has been receiving this intervention since he was in year 7.
Background
Lyle first attended speech and language therapy for hearing impairment and language disorder. However, in June 2021, he was diagnosed with autism impacting his language use. His autism diagnosis has helped him to understand himself better as a person.
How did we help Lyle?
Following his autism diagnosis, Charlotte met with Lyle for a review. This review allowed Charlotte to ask how he felt about his diagnosis. Initially, he didn’t understand what this meant and was reluctant to join the conversation. Eventually, he opened up and wanted to continue discussing the following week.
Charlotte talked with him about how autism was a spectrum and he explained how his family had mentioned he had high levels of autism, not low levels. They also said how he may sometimes find it hard to understand the world, with a few other small chats around the topic.
To help build a foundation to provide intervention, we took the time to find out Lyle’s special interests. He reported that he loved Dragon Ball Z and he was more able to talk about this than other topics. Due to watching for years and having so many books, he has all the information he needs to talk about it easily!
Lyle has also expressed he finds facial expressions difficult. He often does not look at people, so misses expressions which let him know if they’re being serious or sarcastic. On that note, he has found sarcasm difficult and often has to ask people if they are being serious. People not saying what they mean can make it hard for him to understand!
With these discussions, Charlotte found the areas she and Lyle could work on together in relation to his autism. Within their discussions, new things presented themselves that they worked on together. Charlotte also spent some time showing him online the different ways autism might present in people and which he felt were part of his communication style. He could then use constructive methods to support his autism and language disorder.
What is Lyle’s progress to date?
Lyle is now much more aware of his own journey and what autism means for him. Together, he and Charlotte created a PowerPoint with his strengths, the things he likes and what helps him when he feels overwhelmed or that he is not understanding a situation. This PowerPoint can be shared with Lyle’s teachers and parents so that everyone is on the same page. This allows him to have consistent intervention and support.
What does Lyle have to say about his therapy?
Lyle shared that “when I got tested, mum and dad said something about people thinking I’m naughty, but it’s just the way I am” when he was first talking about his autism. Since then, he is much more confident in himself, with a much better understanding of his strengths and areas to strengthen!
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