As a teacher I was never beyond using any creative, unusual, unorthodox and flat out one of a kind system to help a child learn to communicate. Duke was a just turned four year old in my preschool class who had a generally cheerful disposition, a brilliant smile, an absolute love for music and anything with wheels, and significant delays due to autism. He did not imitate, he did not vocalize speech sounds, he did not use signs or picture symbols and he did not take kindly to anyone who tried to place these demands upon him. And when I say he did not take kindly to it, I mean that this four and a half foot tall four year old who was built like a line backer went into full combat meltdown. He once attempted to break my classroom window, and I was astonished by the durability of window panes from the 1960s.
I noticed that Duke would sit transfixed during music activities, especially activities that involved instruments. So I began a "make it up as you go along, but take data to save your arse" language program. During direct instruction sessions, I would have him sit with me, and between us would be a drum. I would say a word that I wanted him to imitate, and then tap the rhythm of the word out on the drum. Then I would say the word again and guide him through tapping out the rhythm. If the word was a feasibly small object I then went through tapping the real object on the drum to the rhythm of the word and having him do the same. This worked best with highly preferred objects like toy cars and trucks, a spoon (to get a bite of pudding), a cup (for a drink of chocolate milk), and for fun sing song turn taking activities ("Hello Duke" "Hello Teacher"). I honestly had no idea if this would work or if I would have a proven failure of a communication education system. For Duke, it clicked. He heard the rhythm and music of the words and associated them with the objects.
After about a month I could hold Duke's most favorite item, a toy car, out of his reach and wait for a vocalization without the drum (we had practiced and learned it there). He would try every behavior pattern possible to wear me down and convince me to just surrender and give him the car. At first it took an average of 10 minutes of a tantrum before he would make eye contact and in what I can only imagine was pure disgust say "car". This soon spread to bubbles, light (for a light up toy), cookie, and so many more words. His vocabulary grew steadily, and the average time of negative behaviors before he would vocalize a word got down to as low as an average of 15 seconds with many spoken words without any negative behaviors.
The drum then became a way of introducing language in a social turn taking situation. I speak/drum first and then you answer/drum back. The rhythm of speaking to another person. I had never appreciated the music in a conversation before, but as we tapped out the beat I heard it in all my conversations and in the rhythm of my every day language. I could give him all the words in the world, but it was not until I found the beat that he was able to utilize them and discover language. Now even when I listen to classical music, or jazz, or any music without vocal accompaniments I still hear a language and speech in the talking drums.

* Photo courtesy of istockphoto