Of pickled peppers? Nope. There’s no connection here to the pepper-picking piper. The PEC I am pondering focuses on picture cards. These picture cards posed as the primary form of communication for Zach for a solid decade of his young life. From about age 2 to age 12 (when iPad came along) Zach relied on the PEC system to communicate. It proved a positive, powerful method of communication for a non-speaking person. As a young boy, Zach relied on PECs® to provide alternative expressive language which autism took away.
Imagine my surprise last week as I opened an old box packed with PECs cards; a box I tucked away in 2012. Making an effort to clean out the playroom, I came across this box and decided to purge its contents. Zach reached a point, about 12 years ago, where he was done with those little square pictures. Not only had an uninformed (to put it politely) teacher wrecked his motivation to use them, but technological advances allowed assistive and alternative communication devices to hit the scene. No surprise, since the rate of autism spectrum disorder had skyrocketed in the late 1990s into the 2000s.

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PECs was developed in the early 1980s by a speech and language pathologist named Lori Frost. With Dr. Andrew Bondy, it was debuted at the Delaware Autistic Program and took off from there. This Picture Exchange Communication system allowed people with little to no spoken language to communicate needs, wants, preferences, and more through the exchange of cards with graphics on them. Each small, square card had both an image and a word (or label) on it.
Originally, the images were very basic and short on detail. Faces depicting emotion were simple beige circles with no hair, no ears, no neck, no nose, no eyebrows. (We used to call them eggs with eyes). Over time, PEC images became more literal and detailed and featured human faces with features.
It’s no wonder that studies on PECs revealed a decrease in tantrums and aggressive behaviors among children with autism who could not speak. We saw that illustrated in our own family and did not need a study to point this out. Prior to adopting the full PECs program for home and school, my visits to Target’s photo counter were profuse. When it became apparent that Zach’s expressive language skills were suffering, I began taking pictures of anything and everything in his world and turning them into laminated four by sixes which I taped to a large foam board in the kitchen. Anytime he felt the need, he could go to the board and pull down a “card” to show me what he wanted. (Playground was the most popular card back then!).

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No surprise that when an SLP in his classroom introduced PECs to him, he already knew what to do. Phase I of the program was mastered! Zach took to PECs so naturally and quickly that we had trouble keeping up with card production. Before we knew it, we had shoebox upon shoebox and sandwich baggie after sandwich baggie chock-full of squared and Velcroed icons. (Ooops – we must honor the VELCRO® brand and call them hook and loop fasteners).
These “velour” and “crochet” fasteners, when affixed to the white square and a board or book of some kind, provided the organizational structure essential to the success of picture exchange communication. I went to town with creating boards and cards for the kitchen, the bathroom, Zach’s bedroom, the car. We soon discovered, however, that the school and speech therapist were printing and using different icons from what we were using at home. This inconsistency would lead to confusion and perpetuate hesitancy in Zach’s choice of cards. The problem had to be addressed.
In time, the partnership between home and school was secured (as secured as one can make it in the world of special education). Whether at home or on campus, Zach’s PECs books were as parallel as they could be. The graphic for Zach’s hamburger was a photo of a meat patty (as he ate them, bun-less) and not a picture of a burger on a bun. PECs needed to be literal, after all.
We, and school personnel, found it cumbersome for Zach to pull out his PECs book when needed, if it was in his backpack, stored inside his desk, or on a table at home, so we added a bungee cord to each binder, and voila, he was able to carry PECs around on his shoulder. (Thank goodness bungee is a generic term and not a brand, or I’d have to call that a double-hooked elastic cord).
By today’s standards for AAC devices, a plastic binder with hook and loop fasteners, made transportable with a bungee cord, is so antiquated! But when Zach was in elementary school, this is exactly what he needed, and exactly what worked.
As time passed, Zach became proficient with PECs. He relied on those cards for everything. (So did we.) I learned rapidly that the key to PEC card longevity was lamination, so I bought a laminator and fired that baby up several times a week. School personnel also assisted in making and replacing cards, although they preferred the eggs with eyeballs to my more detailed portraits.
As PECs gained popularity in autism classrooms, workshops popped up everywhere so parents could learn how to incorporate this program into their lives. Where it was difficult in the early days to find free printable PECs pictures, it eventually became easy to find cards and even customize them online. PECs were plentiful. And, I daresay, our household probably had five pecks worth of PEC pictures!

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Throughout Zach’s childhood and early adolescence, PECs was a lifestyle. Like Hansel and Gretel’s trail of crumbs, PECs ended up scattered along our paths. I’d vacuum under the furniture and retrieve 10 or so PECs cards. We’d go to a car wash, and find French fries and hamburger cards under the carseat. Dust behind the TV…Oh! There’s the card for his Percy video! We’d find little laminated squares in the fridge, under his bed, on his train table, in the sensory bin, and even in the sock drawer.

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When we traveled, PECs went too. I’m sure a good P.I. could retrace our steps over an entire vacation using the trail of PECs left in our wake. Those little things would scatter like dandelion seeds.

Potentially the worst PEC card ever.
This communication system was a great success. But suddenly, Zach began hesitating when using cards at home. It wasn’t like plateauing, and it didn’t seem like boredom. Something else was at play. From our perspective, it seemed as if he had some irritation or anger toward the cards. It was like he lost his way with them and he’d shake his head no if we pressed the issue. It did not make sense. We tried to ride it out.
One night, his school was open to parents. Back to School Night, they called it. Anyone was welcome to come in, peruse the classroom, check out the art projects made by students, visit with the teacher, and ask questions. I attended. I perused, I peeked around, I probed. I sat at Zach’s desk. The teacher (I’ll identify her as Petunia) was (questionably) not in attendance. The classroom aides were there, walking around the classroom like tuckered out tigers in a zoo enclosure on a hot day.

Photo Credit: Robert Stokoe
As I looked through Zach’s desk (or “station”) I noticed something odd. There was no PECs binder. I glanced around the room. Perhaps it was kept on his coat hook. Alright…maybe by his basket of preferred items. When it didn’t turn up, I pressed the aide.
“Um, hi Violet, I’m trying to find Zach’s PECs book.”
“His what, now?”
“Zach’s PECs book. Binder. The small red and blue book with all his PECs cards.”
“Gee, I’m not sure on that…”
“You know, it has the cards, a sentence strip, it’s on a bungee cord so he can carry it…”
She looked around the room with just her head turning left to right. She shrugged. The look in her eyes told me something was up.
“I am really not too sure on that,” she whispered like a librarian. “Maybe the speech lady has it.”
That seemed plausible. And perhaps it would have satisfied me until morning if the second aide hadn’t sauntered over and asked what we were looking for.
“She wants …. what is it now … the PEC book? Is that right?”
“Yes. ZACH’S PECs BINDER. WITH. ALL. HIS. ICONS. IN. IT.” They looked at each other like Shaggy and Scooby-Doo upon seeing a green ghoul in a haunted mansion.
“Where IS his BINDER?” I was fast-becoming the ghoul.
“Ohhhhh! I think I know what you’re talking about, Mom. (Did she just call me Mom????) You’re referring to the classroom schedule book. It’s over here.” She beckoned me to the edge of the whiteboard where perched on the aluminum marker rack was Zach’s binder. Bungeecordless.
There was not much difference between “Mom” and Scooby’s ghoul at that moment. I approached the binder and saw that all of Zach’s painstakingly made icons were no longer in the pages of the binder. The sentence strip was there, but no cards were displayed upon it to convey any need or want. Each hard plastic page which previously held his words now had other, generic icons on them.
I stood motionless for minutes, trying to wrap my head around what was happening. Out of the corner of my (glowing orange) eyes, I saw the aides skulk away. Within the plastic pages of the previously personalized binder were cards for snack time, play time, bathroom time, music time, lunch time, and story time. Petunia had made an executive (and cruel) decision to dismantle the personalized communication book meant for Zach alone and morphed it into a schedule tool she could use during classroom transitions.
Never mind that she was totally going against the founding principles of the PECs system (I almost wanted to report Petunia to Ms. Frost and Dr. Bondy!) but she also effectively silenced a picture-card-reliant communicator. She took away my son’s voice. No wonder Zach was acting differently with his binder at home. If he was not accessing it at school, was he supposed to do so at home? If someone took it away in his classroom, would it be taken away in his kitchen? My rule-following boy was “following rules.”
This atrocity was addressed the following morning, bright and early, as I marched past the front desk secretary and into the principal’s office. Lo and behold; the principal had been apprised of the situation and “pleasantly” informed me that Petunia would be taking steps to restore the binder to its original condition.
Looking back, I believe it was me who did most of the restoring. And what it taught me was that Back-to-School Night should not be a once-a-year thing. I never trusted Petunia again. And going forward, we attended meetings with her, and others, fully armed with IEP guidebooks for parents and an advocate by our side.
Zach did not fully rally from that betrayal; his use of PECs suffered, and there was often aggression if we came across as forceful in our encouragement. When we made the switch from PECs binders to the DynaVox device (basically an electronic version of the system with voice output) we faced another battle as that teacher (a different one) announced to me on the day the device arrived: I won’t be using that thing in my classroom.
Isn’t having autism hard enough? And when there is apraxia of speech (nonverbal autism), isn’t that difficulty amplified? If you are asking yourself how someone teaching special education students does such things, you are not alone. Petunia and her successor made decisions to stamp out and reject a child’s form of communication. A child without vocal speech.
From the days of my 4 by 6 photos, to the PECs years, through the DynaVox adventures, onto iPad apps, and onward to spelling (S2C), our family (mostly Zach) has had a steep uphill climb with many twists and turns. Let’s not forget American Sign Language! Nor the GoTalk! And, oh my goodness, the INDI he used for a while in high school. When I really tap into past memories, I even surprise myself with how many things we tried and used through the years to support Zach’s expressive language needs. See what happens when you open an old box?

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Last week, when I opened that box containing the PECs collection from decades ago, I was brought back in time. Much of it was as familiar to me as my own hand. I laughed at the plethora of bacon cards and questioned why I once created a “leaf” card. I was proud of my tiny sketches depicting any and all things he might request on an airplane. But more-so, I felt pride for my son. He moved from one system to another as times and circumstances changed. He adapted to each method, learning new ways to communicate and make his needs known. There were some steep learning curves, yet he conquered them each and every time and carefully and proudly carried each assistive device, whether it was on a cheap bungee cord or a black baggage strap.

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Zach kept his chin up despite the fact there was always someone in his educational environment who didn’t believe in him. Astonishing, but true. I’m thankful for the ones who did believe.
I credit Zach with being motivated to communicate and having intention to do so. When I was introduced to the phrase Presume competence, I felt thrilled that the approach we, as parents, had taken could be boiled down into two words. It is just kind and respectful to hold this belief. How I wish more people would recognize that.

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Hanging on a wall in our house is a hand-painted quotation that reads The absence of speech should never imply the absence of thought, feeling, or opinion. These are truthful words.
I almost dumped the PECs collection, but I just could not bear to send them to a trash can. Those little squares served as a much-needed bridge between Zach’s mind and the world around him. A world that is loud, mostly verbal, and speech-based. A world that too quickly measures someone’s intelligence by their ability to use vocabulary words in spoken sentences. A world that generally does not presume competence in individuals with intellectual, emotional, social, physical, and developmental challenges.
It is the same world that today is more aptly tuning into documentaries like Spellers or reading books by non-speaking authors like The Reason I Jump by Naomi Higashida. I’ll take it as a sign that tides are turning and paradigms are shifting.

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One thing will not change, and that is my drive to support my son in the quest to communicate fully and independently. Given how excited he is to practice typing and how focused he is when spelling on letter boards, I have no doubt he will get there. He will.get.there. And someday he might compose alliterative poems and tongue twisters on par with Peter Piper and his peck of pickled peppers. I will proudly print and present his poems to any people who might partake in the pleasure of such playful poems.

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I would be one who would love to read his poems ❤️
Thank you! And you would be one of the people at school who BELIEVED in him! 🙂
I feel like standing and shouting YES!!! as I hold up an oversized PEC card bungeed to a 2×4 🙂
Zack is amazing and has amazing parents who fight for him and his rights…a kid can’t ask for better than that! Oh, and your comment “The absence of speech should never imply the absence of thought, feeling, or opinion” should be emblazoned over the door of every school.
Just my 2 cents worth 😉