r/MadeMeSmile • u/bendubberley_ • 16d ago

Wholesome Moments Autistic non-verbal boy speaks directly to his mother for the first time.

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

47.3k Upvotes

90% Upvoted

955 comments sorted by

View all comments

34

u/fraze2000 16d ago

That is so wonderful. She is so lucky to have caught this moment on video. Does anyone know if the young chap continued to be communicative or was it just a one-off?

43

u/iiwrench55 16d ago

I don't know about this particular situation but my sister is semi-verbal autistic with echolalia too, and we had the same thing with her. With her, it seemed like a one-off initially but it was slowly progressive, from repeating words/phrases verbatim, to using words/phrases independently, to using words/phrases contextually. Of course, it's dependent on the child, but it's a very big step.

44

u/SadBadPuppyDad 16d ago edited 16d ago

My wife and I had neighbors that had a non verbal, autistic child. The mother was intent that she was going to do everything she could to give him a chance to develop speech including working with speech language pathologists and going back to school to learn about it herself. She knew there was a good chance her efforts might not make a difference, but it wasn't going to be because she didn't try hard enough. They ended up moving away and we fell out of touch for several years. The last time I'd seen their son, he was 6 years old and had no speech at all. Last year we ended up going to a party and the son, now 12 years old, was sitting and talking about a video game he wanted to play. I'm not joking when I say I was literally speechless.

8

u/rawrpandasaur 16d ago

Ha, speechless! Reverse uno!

25

u/theyellowbaboon 16d ago

My nephew is non verbal. He never spoke a word to his parents or anyone else (that we know of).

I try to spend time with him because he likes me and enjoy his company.

Few years ago we were driving back from somewhere when he suddenly he said: “I need to go to the bathroom”. Clear as day. I caught it on my dash cam.

That was the only set of words he spoke, ever.

6

u/DeathByLemmings 16d ago

Wow that's astounding, it's so hard to imagine what their mind must feel like

1

u/theyellowbaboon 16d ago

You know, I think at the time he was wearing diapers too (he was 17 or 18).

0

u/Greatlarrybird33 16d ago

It's cool it's on camera, I just want to know who has their doorbell cameras pointed inside the house and why?

3

u/sunnyderp 16d ago

Because they have an autistic kid. Sometimes you need to know how they got hurt or sometimes you need to step away for a second and need eyes on them. It’s likely a ring security system.

2

u/vera214usc 16d ago

Ring makes indoor and outdoor security cameras as well, not just doorbell cams.