05/17/2026
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All Communication Counts: “5 Little Ducks Went Out One Day”
(a link for substack of the following writing is in the comments)
In years past, the focus for disability supports was weighted towards the idea that my nonspeaking son would be ‘taught’ to communicate according to the plan of others.
In 2020, I learned a different way to support my son’s delayed echolalic language (gestalt language) by honoring it as full communication.
This echolalia is a language that is “borrowed” from the environment, a line from a song, a book, or a comment overheard.
It is a language that can be nurtured rather than something to push through.
I first began changing how I talked to him, moving away from diverse short sentences that I had been taught to do.
It appeared that he wasn’t listening to me in the beginning, with his pacing and walking about.
Over months, it gradually became apparent that he was noticing my offerings of predictable streams of language, when his fleeting glances came my way.
The language I offered him was infused with bits of language from songs he loved and familiar family sayings.
Then he began to occasionally repeat the familiar patterned language he heard, sometimes hours, days, and months later.
At one point about two years in, he began to randomly verbalize some delayed echolalic gestalts, up to 10 times in a day.
Many of those gestalts were also audio-recorded and video recorded with the familiar voices of loved ones into his high tech AAC device so he could explore them anytime he wanted.
I managed to randomly catch two of his spoken gestalts in home videos. Those were programmed into the alternative augmentative communication (AAC) device so he could hear his own voice too.
Then we heard his rare spoken words directly pulled from those gestalts, and even rarer, a new combination of those words.
At that point, we tried once again with using icon based AAC vocabulary, in the conventional way, so that he might communicate according to the plan of others.
In meaningful moments, I tried sensitively showing him in the AAC language system again how to pull up a word and combine it with another word to make self generated phrases.
His responses to this renewed conventional AAC modeling were mostly neutral; he had seen it before many times in the past.
He expressly preferred, if using high tech AAC, using his programmed videoclips and with his recreational ipad songs to communicate.
Then he hit his teens.
The physical changes of growing up and health challenges caused him to become quieter.
He pushed away his high tech AAC, and then pushed away his recreational ipad.
One day he even put his AAC ipad and recreational ipad on a shelf out of my reach.
I respected his decision to not use high tech technologies because AAC is fundamentally not just an electronic tablet, or even just using “words”.
In the same circles where I read about how to support delayed echolalic language, it led me to information in other circles about supporting more expansive communication, particularly for people with physical and/or intellectual disabilities.
Through that learning, I worked on strengthening my observations and responses to N’s expressive communication that was not words, but rather “embodied” communication.
This has helped keep N’s confidence as a communicator going, and with people consistently showing up, listening, and responding he becomes a stronger communicator every day.
His health challenges have now stabilized with daily medical intervention, and he feels better.
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All the learning I did in the spaces where communication and intellectual disabilities were openly discussed, it gradually began to lay bare something that was in the back of my mind.
It was a growing understanding that N had cognitive disabilities, and those had not ever been ‘officially’ addressed nor supported, and needed to be.
So, this realization along with many other additional reasons, we decided to get N evaluated to see if he had an intellectual disability.
He does indeed have an intellectual disability.
We don’t see his intellectual disability as “bad” or somehow “inferior”, it is just a part of who he is.
It also helps better plan for supports, adaptations, and accommodations that he needs to access communication, education, and to thrive in life especially as he grows into adulthood.
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Recently, we had some inclement weather and N was restless.
I got on a stepstool and pulled the recreational ipad from off the high shelf where he put it.
I pulled up the Spotify app, and offered it to him for listening to music.
He was happy to oblige and let the melodies soothe him.
A couple days later, with a refreshed interest in the recreational ipad he was listening to Spotify and played the children’s song “5 Little Ducks” on repeat.
”Five little ducks went out one day, over the hill and far away.”
Sometimes when he plays media on repeat, it can mean he is thinking about something in particular.
I paid attention to the little colorful video display for the song with little yellow ducks walking in the outdoors.
I leaned over and listened to the song with him, and softly sang along.
Then I got to singing along with the words, “went out one day”.
Right then, N looked up at me with a prolonged fixed eye gaze, and then quickly went to get his shoes.
This embodied communication in response to the language in the song made it clear that he was ready to go out!
It was a beautiful afternoon so I took out a photo album that we use for low-tech communication.
I opened the photo album and asked “shall we go to (-name of the park-)?”
He looked at the photo and tapped it.
This tapping with his hand on choices given is his indication of “yes”.
When his answer is no, he will push it away, or remain still and silent.
If he had pushed it away, or remained silent, I would just flipped to the next photo, and then the next, until he selected the one he wanted.
We went to the chosen park.
He enjoyed watching some sprinklers, and of course some ducks too.
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Some may think that using a children’s counting song to communicate is too simple and rudimentary for a teenager.
However, all of N’s communications are wonderfully layered and reflect his own preferences, strengths, creativity, and abilities.
Some people say that N’s communications don’t count, and try to steer him to how *they* want him to communicate.
N clearly wants his communication to count, he has always wanted it to count (and no one listened for a very long time).
He wants to count it all!
His use of the image of ducks walking outside is communication.
The idea from the song of a mother and a child outdoors together, is communication.
The peppy rhythm of the music conveying the energy of walking at a quick pace is communication.
The words, the printed text from the song convey, “went out one day”, “over the hill”, and “far away” are communication.
His embodied communications, the fixed eye gaze, and the using his hands to tap a photo to indicate a, “yes, that is what I want!”, are communication.
The use of his shoes as an ‘object of reference’ to request leaving the house is communication.
The use of a photo album with partner assisted scanning to clarify where he wanted to go is communication.
And there are people who will still insist that it does not count, that it is “sub-optimal” or “unreliable”.
But N knows this about himself all too well:
His communication is complete and whole, and creative, it is spontaneous, it is optimal, it is complex, it is reliable for *him*.
And it all counts.
(visual description: screenshot photo from Spotify app of song “5 Little Ducks”, little yellow ducks are walking in a line in the grass)
