Communicating
Darren, 12, intellectual disability

Robbie's mate Darren has an intellectual disability and a speech impairment. When he sat down in front of me to use Food for Thought, I guessed that it would be too easy for him. However he used it in a very different way. Darren's expressive language is not so good and his speech is difficult to understand. Using Sentence Maker, he was making sentences about the foods he liked and being very selective about which foods he chose to complete the sentence. He would scroll through the choices with the ‘more’ button and scrutinise each COMPIC pictograph. Sometimes he would choose a food, but most of the time he would just shake his head and move on. He made sentences such as “I like zucchini”, “I like cabbage”, “I like broccoli” and so on.

Now, I don’t like to generalise, but these were unusual foods for a teenager to like. It was then that I found out from his teacher that the foods he had selected were the foods he was able to eat – these were the ones he wasn't allergic to! So for that ten minutes while using Food for Thought, he was able to communicate with me independently – a real bonus for him.