Communicating Partners: 30 Years of Building Responsive Relationships with Late-Talking Children including Autism, Asperger's Syndrome (ASD), Down Syndrome, and Typical Developement

This book was the answer to my prayers. If you want to learn more about how we can improve communication skills, it all starts here. We were concerned because our grandson was not speaking yet (2.5) and was frequently avoiding eye contact. This book gives you easy to understand principles and exercises to help increase interaction with a child, and WOW - he has made tremendous strides in communicating with sounds, gestures, eye contact and big smiles. Great Great book!

This book was recommended by my grandson's psychologist. He said throw all the other books away and we have, gladly! This book is our new bible. It has not only given us hope, but has made daily life less stressful and more fun.

This book is excellent! It's about enjoying interacting with your child, verbal or not. It's about respecting your child for who he or she is, and helping him/her become more socially interactive, not about finding a "cure." I highly recommend this book.

I would have found this helpful if it was the first book that I had read on communicating with a special child. I had read others however and I found the information to be repetitive.

If you like Stanley Greenspan's DIR/Floortime approach, but need help applying it to teaching your child communication and language skills, this is probably the book for you.Dr. MacDonald's approach is a developmental approach, where you get down on the child's level and try to get him/her up onto the next step with you. (For anyone who has read any Greenspan, this should sound familiar). Unlike ABA, it does not teach skills in isolation, and does not skip developmental steps to reach a desired "eventual" goal, something I've seen harm children many times.To give a fairly common example, a lot of schools push children from crawling into walking before the child is ready. Just because a child is 5 physical years old does not mean they are developmentally ready to walk, and most of these children suffer from problems with trunk stability and fine motor control that are directly linked to this skipping of developmental steps. I've seen ABA programs that push for language too early in the child's development leaving kids knowing a lot of labels for things, but still having no idea of how to use words to communicate with others. Saying "red truck" doesn't mean anything if all the child is doing is labelling an object, that is, it is not COMMUNICATION. It may be somewhat meaningful if it is used as a request (for example, the child wants to actually play with that toy).As a person with High Functioning Autism myself, I believe in Floortime and Communicating Partners as developmentally sensitive alternatives to ABA that are more meaningful to the child. As a Habilitation worker and Speech Assistant, I use a combination of these approaches with most of the children I work with.Good luck helping the children in your life, autistic and otherwise, learn how to communicate better.

After reading this book, and I have previously read other books by Dr. MacDonald, I must say that the techniques in it are the most family friendly ideas I've ever heard of! The viewpoint is so refreshing, to think that we as families CAN be the most influential people in our child's social development is a new approach. This book has shown me how to incorporate very do-able ideas into our everyday life. The techniques included in it are something the entire family can learn and can supplement any professional's course of therapy. Professional therapists would also find this valuable...it concentrates on the social aspect of development, and really, that is the basis for all communication. To get into the child's world and to be able to match his abilities, without judgement or correction, has unbelievable, immediate results! I highly recommend this book, to families, educators, therapists, and physicians!

When we started doing the things suggested in this book our sons language and communication started to grow much more than before. The method is very easy, and yet so hard. The point is that to help our son develop, we have to change to fit him. This book covers all you need to get started right away (without even reading the whole book). It's great both for parents and professionals. My son has Down syndrome.

I am the owner of a private practice that provides speech and occupational therapy services to children with special needs, many of them falling on or near the autism spectrum. Communicating Partners is the book that my speech therapists consistantly recommend to parents of young children looking to support their child's language development. It is also a good book for professionals and my therapists have used it as the basis for ongoing discussion about therapy provision.

We have a Down Syndrome grandson. Our daughter had a Blue Badge for him but it was withdrawn when his mobility improved. This meant that because he was more mobile his safety was further compromised, because he had always displayed symptoms associated with Autism. Among other symptoms, loud noises, car horns, emergency sirens, motor bikes etc. will drive him into a frenzy. He will cover his ears with his hands and run away from the noise indiscriminately. New assessment criteria for issuing a Blue Badge to people with "hidden" disabilities were introduced in 2019 by the Transport minister Grant Chapps and this according to the published criteria would make him emminently eligible for a Blue Badge. Applications for same (with professional assessment attached), were turned down, because not enough evidence was deemed to have been submitted. My daughter has friends with Autistic children and they have been awarded a Blue Badge simply by applying. I discovered the book 'Communicating Partners' whilst trying to help with this situation. The book explains that the symptoms of Autism are often displayed by Down Syndrome children in a "crossover" context. If a further appeal is warranted, I may be able to use the book to perhaps provide enlightenment to the issuing authority.