Maybe those patients or caregivers should pay the robot then, with nuts and bolts instead of money, while the therapists sits back, watches and drinks their coffee.
Our smallest nonverbal child uses instead a microphone. We bought it a week ago for him, and he has been chattering away with sounds in it every since. Prior to getting it, at most ten to twenty sounds a day.
He either loves the louder unique sound coming from it, or the slight echo of his voice, or the feeling of being in control when to hear and stop that unique sound. Regardless, it gives us hope, as if he is constantly using it and seems amused by it.
So, if he is getting used to not being silent this way, despite all our numerous attempts prior to encourage speech, eventually maybe he may start to echo our words spoken, through separate microphone, and later by regular voice.
Once/if he gets to echoing, we are hopeful this may help facilitate speech, based on all our attempts with our oldest child who first echoed words, before learning to speak sight words, then phrases, then sentences.
Regular daily attempts to engage our youngest through home-base play therapy, and through talks to him during him watching us do natural daily activities, or when he does such himself, had not resulted in any noticeable speech success.
So, we figured we had nothing to lose by trying a microphone with him, and as he had been watching our oldest sing with his own microphone anyway. So far it is working.
Anyway, will keep everyone updated if there is more progress.
