Customer Reviews

A Picture's Worth: PECS and Other Visual Communication Strategies in Autism (Topics in Autism)

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It is truly frustrating when your child who should speak - can't speak. Just because they cannot speak - does not mean they DON'T understand. They do understand. It is just that they way of showing you they understand is not available to them yet.
This is a great book for helping you get introduced to PECS (Picture Exchange System) and scheduling. This book helped me get started on giving my autistic son WORDS he could not express.
With this book buy an inexpensive digital camera, plastic laminate and an inexpensive color printer because PECS will change your childs life. This book will help you get started.
We started PECS with Jeff just under three years of age. After 2 weeks he was making requests with single pictures and NO LONGER TANTRUMING BECAUSE HE WAS FRUSTRATED! HE COULD COMMUNICATE. Fast forward to age five and Jeff can read over 500 words, write sentences because he used PECS. PECS changed my son's life and made the beginning process of communication before speech possible.

(Happy ending, Jeff now speaks!)
Start here..

"A Picture's Worth" is simply a must read for anyone who seeks help for a child who is challenged by verbal communications.

The authors, Andy Bondy and Lori Frost are the developers of PECS (The Picture Exchange Communications System). PECS seeks to quickly establish functional communications with children with autism. Contrary to popular belief, PECS will not discourage a child from developing verbal speech, or cause a child to lose established speech.

Although the therapeutic goal of PECS seeks only to rapidly establish functional augmented communications by teaching a child to exchange a picture icon for a highly desired item, the program's application in preschoolers offers a marvelous side effect. Approximately two-thirds of the children under five who used PECS as their primary means of communications for a full year moved on to develop verbal language.

A Picture's Worth describes in user friendly language the mechanics and theories behind the six successive levels of implementing PECS. Bondy and Frost's user friendly language and clearly written commentary makes it easy for anyone who is interested in establishing communications with their autistic child to begin training.

The book also offers compelling case studies, and an overview of the innovative and effective behavioral techniques of Bondy and Frost's companion program, "The Pyramid Approach to Education".

PECS is particularly effective when combined with the behavioral techniques of the Pyramid Approach to education, and offers the child who has struggled to find success with Lovaas based ABA and other intervetion programs an inexpensive option which will appeal to the well documented visual strengths of children with autism.

Anyone considering implementing a beginning intervention program with a child with autism should consider taking a look at this insightful, easy to read, and well written contribution to the body of literature regarding autism teaching methods.

PECS is a marvelous stand alone program for beginning communicators, but it can also coexist nicely with any other early intervention programs, allowing your child to communicate effectively and naturally reduce negative behaviors while alternative interventions seek to teach verbal language.

As the mother of two boys with autism, I wish I'd begun PECS on the day of their diagnoses. However, I'd be sure to advance them to more sophisticated means of augmented communications as they age out of early intervention as most children with autism will find that they have much more to communicate than their basic wants and needs. Moving along towards more advanced techonology in communications systems will allow them to do so, and prevent many of the negative behaviors that came back to our son when his method of communications failed to grow with him.

My son, 3, has been using PECS for 6 months now and I bought this book hoping to find more instruction on the use of PECS and different sentence structures. While the book gives a good overview of the system, I think there is far too little concrete information for parents wishing to implement PECS in a home environment. I was disappointed that right when I thought the author would go into detail about a topic, he simply referred to another publication for more information.

If a parent is looking for real instruction on using PECS, I would recommend the instructional manual sold by Pyramid Educational Products. PECS is a very useful tool in gaining understanding and speech in autistic children. This book just isn't the best way to go about learning how to implement the program.

This book is an excellent resource to parents and professionals who are implementing the PECS communication sysems. We started PECS with our son when he was 22 months old -- just weeks after he was diagnosed with autistic spectrum disorder. After attending the 2-week intensive PECS camp, we used PECS as the primary vehicle for communication for our son. We watched in amazement as our child blossomed as he discovered the world of communication. When we started PECS, our son had no functional speech and spoke only a handful of word-approximations. One year later he speaks fluently (although his speech is still disordered), often using 6 to 8 word FUNCTIONAL sentences. I am certain that it is the PECS system that brought him this far. PECS is so much more than just trading "pictures for pretzles" and this book is an excellent resource for learning how to use PECS to its full capacity. We recommend it enthusiastically.

This book was written by the developers of PECS (Picture Exchange Communication System) and the founders of Pyramid Educational Consultants, Dr. Andy Bondy and Lori Frost. Bondy and Frost bring their wealth of knowledge and their many years of experience to this easy to understand book. This book examines the value of nonverbal communication strategies for individuals with autism and other related developmental disabilities in addition to describing PECS. A Picture's Worth is a fantastic book for parents and professionals that are still exploring visual communication strategies for their child or student.

This is an immensely helpful resource for parents and professionals with a focus on the following topics: defining communication, understanding communication, the relationship between behavior and communication, augmentative and alternative communication systems and using visual strategies to enhance understanding.

In addition, this book provides information about the development of PECS and a brief overview of all six phase of PECS. Though this book is geared mainly toward visual communication strategies and PECS for non-verbal individuals, there is also a section that explores the relationship between PECS and speech.

Several useful tables are located throughout the book. My favorite table outlines the most frequent mistakes in each phase of PECS. I found the Resource Guide at the back of the book helpful as well!

It is important to point out that this book is not a training manual for PECS. If you want to learn how to implement PECS effectively, I would suggest reading the PECS Training Manual and attending PECS training. Check out these other books written by Bondy and Frost:

Autism 24/7: A Family Guide to Learning at Home and in the Community (Topics in Autism)
PECS: The Picture Exchange Communication System

I find this extremely practical and well presented. Detailed examples of actual working practice are given that are both helpful and thought-provoking. It gives excellent explanations of both the why and how for using PECS. It makes a complicated area immediately accessible and is written by the absolute experts, the two people who invented PECS. I especially like the way they put PECS into the wider context of how we all communicate.

My son, 3, has been using PECS for 6 months now and I bought this book hoping to find more instruction on the use of PECS and different sentence structures. While the book gives a good overview of the system, I think there is far too little concrete information for parents wishing to implement PECS in a home environment. I was disappointed that right when I thought the author would go into detail about a topic, he simply referred to another publication for more information.

If a parent is looking for real instruction on using PECS, I would recommend the instructional manual sold by Pyramid Educational Products. PECS is a very useful tool in gaining understanding and speech in autistic children. This book just isn't the best way to go about learning how to implement the program.

I bought this book a few years ago and I really enjoyed reading it. I did not know much about PECS and was doing a case study with a young boy with autism who did not have a method of communication. I took information from this book and combined it with strategies I was learning in college and I was able to help this child's family begin to communicate with pictures. I have learned a lot more about PECS since then, but this book was a good start. I have shared copies with a few other families since then.

I got as much out of this book as I did from just about anything I have read on PECS, generally. The authors did not much help themselves out by allowing one to look in the book...but that is only a bonus to those in need. Really, however, for what's it is worth, there is a good section in the back of resources. Including within the resources not only the names of places/agencies/web sites/ etc., but all of their information such as address, telephone number, how to contact generally, etc.

So, I do recommend if one is beginning to enter the world of PECS; or just found out their child has a developmental learning disorder that would involve the need to use PECS. However, for those already ahead of the game a bit...I would look elsewhere if you are trying to implement a program.

This book is very helpful to parents who child does not talk. But for children that do talk, this is not a book that teaches verbal skills. I purchase this book for my verbal child and when I finish reading it, I found it to be a waste of money.