A Picture's Worth: PECS and Other Visual Communication Strategies in Autism

It is truly frustrating when your child who should speak - can't speak. Just because they cannot speak - does not mean they DON'T understand. They do understand. It is just that they way of showing you they understand is not available to them yet. This is a great book for helping you get introduced to PECS (Picture Exchange System) and scheduling. This book helped me get started on giving my autistic son WORDS he could not express. With this book buy an inexpensive digital camera, plastic laminate and an inexpensive color printer because PECS will change your childs life. This book will help you get started.We started PECS with Jeff just under three years of age. After 2 weeks he was making requests with single pictures and NO LONGER TANTRUMING BECAUSE HE WAS FRUSTRATED! HE COULD COMMUNICATE. Fast forward to age five and Jeff can read over 500 words, write sentences because he used PECS. PECS changed my son's life and made the beginning process of communication before speech possible.(Happy ending, Jeff now speaks!) Start here..

This book is an excellent resource to parents and professionals who are implementing the PECS communication sysems. We started PECS with our son when he was 22 months old -- just weeks after he was diagnosed with autistic spectrum disorder. After attending the 2-week intensive PECS camp, we used PECS as the primary vehicle for communication for our son. We watched in amazement as our child blossomed as he discovered the world of communication. When we started PECS, our son had no functional speech and spoke only a handful of word-approximations. One year later he speaks fluently (although his speech is still disordered), often using 6 to 8 word FUNCTIONAL sentences. I am certain that it is the PECS system that brought him this far. PECS is so much more than just trading "pictures for pretzles" and this book is an excellent resource for learning how to use PECS to its full capacity. We recommend it enthusiastically.

"A Picture's Worth" is simply a must read for anyone who seeks help for a child who is challenged by verbal communications. The authors, Andy Bondy and Lori Frost are the developers of PECS (The Picture Exchange Communications System). PECS seeks to quickly establish functional communications with children with autism. Contrary to popular belief, PECS will not discourage a child from developing verbal speech, or cause a child to lose established speech. Although the therapeutic goal of PECS seeks only to rapidly establish functional augmented communications by teaching a child to exchange a picture icon for a highly desired item, the program's application in preschoolers offers a marvelous side effect. Approximately two-thirds of the children under five who used PECS as their primary means of communications for a full year moved on to develop verbal language. A Picture's Worth describes in user friendly language the mechanics and theories behind the six successive levels of implementing PECS. Bondy and Frost's user friendly language and clearly written commentary makes it easy for anyone who is interested in establishing communications with their autistic child to begin training. The book also offers compelling case studies, and an overview of the innovative and effective behavioral techniques of Bondy and Frost's companion program, "The Pyramid Approach to Education". PECS is particularly effective when combined with the behavioral techniques of the Pyramid Approach to education, and offers the child who has struggled to find success with Lovaas based ABA and other intervetion programs an inexpensive option which will appeal to the well documented visual strengths of children with autism. Anyone considering implementing a beginning intervention program with a child with autism should consider taking a look at this insightful, easy to read, and well written contribution to the body of literature regarding autism teaching methods. PECS is a marvelous stand alone program for beginning communicators, but it can also coexist nicely with any other early intervention programs, allowing your child to communicate effectively and naturally reduce negative behaviors while alternative interventions seek to teach verbal language. As the mother of two boys with autism, I wish I'd begun PECS on the day of their diagnoses. However, I'd be sure to advance them to more sophisticated means of augmented communications as they age out of early intervention as most children with autism will find that they have much more to communicate than their basic wants and needs. Moving along towards more advanced techonology in communications systems will allow them to do so, and prevent many of the negative behaviors that came back to our son when his method of communications failed to grow with him.