As I have gotten older and as a parent, I have come to realize and understand that proper communication is key in any relationship. If people would take the time to find out the best ways to communicate with those around them, I think life would go a lot smoother. 🙂
Our last child had trouble speaking with he was young. Forming words and communicating what he wanted was difficult. When it was appropriate, he began speech therapy to help him communicate. I remember the frustration he experienced when he was trying to get his point across and folks could not figure out what he wanted.
Today, I am looking at Lil’ Requester, a new iOS app. The app is free to try and comes with a couple different plans depending on how many children you want to use it with.
From their website, “Through Lil’Requester, kids can make requests by expressing feelings and identify familiar people, places and activities in a manner that allows them to value the power of language and reinforcing comprehension.”
The app provides a way to create custom visual and audio requests that can help a child communicate with others. The interface is clean, easy to follow, and very kid friendly. There is no real need for me to go into a lot of details since the app pretty self-explanatory.
To start off, you will select your role: parent, teacher, nanny, therapist. Next you will create your kids accounts. (The free version only allows for 1 child). Within the kids account, you will have Activity, People, Place, and under each of those there are numerous options, such as, under activity, you can have draw, swim, ride, etc.
As was mentioned above, you can create custom activities and audio requests for your child. This is probably the best feature, since you can use items and sounds/voices your child is familiar with, helping them better interact with the app. In addition to custom items, the app provides daily, weekly, or monthly reports and you can share a child’s progress with others if needed.
So, if you have a child or know one that could use some assistance in communicating, then you should try Lil’Requester. You can try it for free and see if it helps. I think back to my child and the troubles he had. We were able to work through things eventually but if an app like this was available years ago, I think it would be able very helpful to bridge the gap and remove some of the frustration of having trouble verbally communicating his needs.
