Ep. 84 Let's Talk About PECS
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What is PECS and why is it popular for autistic children?
What's up everyone and welcome to Making the Shift for Autistic Kids.
We're an SLP couple from California with four boys.
And we're here every week to bring you neuroaffirming tips, tricks, and tools. Are you ready to make the shift? Let's do this!
Hello, hello. Welcome to Making the Shift. I'm Jesse Ginsburg, if you don't know me, also known as the Sensory SLP. I am a speech language pathologist. I have a private practice in Los Angeles I've had for over 10 years. And I also train therapists and parents in neurodiversity affirming practices. Have trained tens of thousands of people all over the world. And today we are going to be talking about PECs. Picture exchange communication system, which is an option for AAC. And the reason that I wanted to have this conversation is because I can't even tell you how often I get parents who call our clinic to schedule and I do a lot of calls in our office every single week with new families and like just Two this week already I've had par two calls.
I've had parents say, Well, we're using PECs right now and our therapists, you know. One said our therapist doesn't think that they're ready for anything else. Another said that like this was the best option for him for whatever reason. And I really just wanted all these resources in one place so we could really talk through PECS, what it is, and what type of AAC might be a better form for a lot of our kids. So I first of all want to say when I'm talking about PECS picture exchange communication system, that is not the same as talking about visuals. And a lot of people get that mixed up. A lot of people think A lot of people will say things like, Oh, well, I use PECs in my sessions um for whatever reason.
And but what they really mean is I use visual supports, right? Like if you have a book. And you have AC symbols printed onto your book to adapt the book, that doesn't mean that that is a PEX book. That's just a visual support within a book. So I think we need to make sure that we are not using the word PEX when we mean the word visual supports because there is a lot of confusion there. Okay. So first let's talk about what the six phases of PECS are. I think that a lot of people jump to say don't use PECs and don't even realize what the six phases are. I was actually trained in PECS many years ago. And I used it. Full disclosure, this is something that was very commonly used when I first started out in my practice.
Our entire clinic was trained at the same time. And this was something that was very commonly used. It's been many, many years now since I actually have used it because I feel like we found better options. Okay, but PEX has six different phases. So the first phase. Is where you use hand over hand. And you teach a child to pick up a picture card of something that they want, something to request, and then hand it to an adult. Okay, so handing a picture over to an adult. And this is something I've done like this phase so many times where um hand over hand, hand it to the person, that's what they're learning. And then the person immediately gives them the thing that is being requested. It's just like teaching them that exchange exchange.
Phase two is having the child actually go and walk to their communication book. get the picture and then take the picture to the person.
How does PECS differ from visual supports and picture books?
Okay, so a little bit farther um of a step. They have to actually go to their communication book, get the picture and give it to a person. I remember supporting these twin girls in their classroom when they were on this step where they had their communication books over across the room and had to go get the things that they were asking for. Okay, s phase three is discriminating between a preferred and non-preferred picture. So you would put something on the book that you knew they wanted, like bubbles, and then you would put something on the book that you know they didn't want. Right? So it might be like shoe, bubbles, or something like that. So then the child would have to go to the book and scan back and forth and think about which is the one that I want, pick it up, bring it to the person.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is PECS and why is it popular for autistic children?
0:08–3:57
2
How does PECS differ from visual supports and picture books?
3:57–11:41
3
What are the six phases of the PECS system?
11:41–14:04
4
How does each PECS phase work in practice (hand‑over, walking to the book, discrimination, etc.)?
14:04–14:30
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from The NeuroAffirm Podcast
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