The Square Peg reviews….Our Boards

#AD #GIFTED We were very lucky to have been given the opportunity to review some communication boards for hidden disabilities from Our Boards. You can check out their website here.

We were gifted a weekly timetable board and a ‘Now and Next’ board. These boards come in a variety of different themes and because Edward loves rockets we chose the space theme.

When the boards first arrived, I was very impressed with the professional quality of them. They are made with rigid, durable dry wipe materials to ensure a long life. The boards also come with a dry wipe pen, a suction pen holder and approximately 10 unique self cling pockets.

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The boards require a little bit of setting up. The company recommend that you use actual pictures of your child doing certain activities e.g eating breakfast, getting dressed etc. If you are unable to print the pictures yourself then the company can do that for you.

Edward has a very very short attention span i.e. 5 seconds. So I had to have a good think about how best to use these boards with Edward. I spoke with Neale Haywood-Shott, the founder of Our Boards about how to use them with Edward. We decided that because Edward doesn’t care what is going to be happening during the week we would try and get him to talk about what he had been doing during the week. I was amazed with his response to this because he never says anything about what he’s been doing.

Once we’d told him what he was going to be doing that day, we would then use the ‘Now and Next’ board to help him with the process of getting ready.

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Edward absolutely loves Star Trek so I pretended that he was Captain James T Kirk of the the Starship Enterprise and told him that this was his mission ‘To boldly go where no man has gone before.’

Edward responds really well to moving the picture from one side of the board to the other when he has completed his task. We also used an activity that we know Edward loves, to do after he has completed the essential task. For example, we said that we could play bubbles once he had completed a task. Edward goes crazy for bubbles so this idea definitely worked.

These boards can be used in multiple ways and are flexible depending on the individual needs of your child. For example, if your child suffers with anxiety about what might be happening during the week ie appointments etc then the board is great to plan and talk through the process and prepare them for it. Or they can be used to open up communication about things that have happened during the week.

So, after using these boards for a few weeks, we are really impressed with the quality and durability of them. Also we are really happy with Edward’s improved communication skills as you can see in the video above.

Let me know if you have any questions about them or if you think they are a good idea in the comments below. If you have an autistic child, do you use communication boards with them?