Quiet Periods (or: My learner stopped pressing the buttons!)
Having a chatty learner go suddenly quiet can be quite alarming for the teacher, but this is actually very common and it’s not even always a problem.
First things first
Do you ever have days where you don’t really feel like talking? Are there times when you feel like slowing things down? Sometimes is it nice to go with the flow and chill? Some days feel like they go pretty well without any intervention from you.
We all need quiet days sometimes.
Don’t assume that your learner using their buttons less or not at all is a bad thing, a problem, or something has gone wrong. Learners evolve over time, just like their favourite toy can change or any number of their preferences might change. Don’t expect their button use to always look the same. Look at these common causes of quiet periods and see if anything in them seems to apply to your situation, but don’t panic!
How you address the quiet period depends a little on what caused it, but the core of your response will be the same. Consciously up your modeling, try to double or even triple it, and then be patient. Don’t get frustrated, don’t try to pressure your learner into pushing. Don't prompt more or start directing their use. Release all expectations from your mind about how they have been using their buttons before or how many times they use their soundboard in a day, and just give them time to work through it.
We’re running through all the questions first, then giving you some advice on what to do. That’s because more than one issue can be in play here.
Common causes of Quiet Periods
Did you change anything on the board?
Changes to the soundboard are probably the biggest cause of quiet periods. If you need to change something on the board, do it very very slowly. You might see people making changes quickly and their learner coping with that, but it takes time to figure out what your learner can handle and rushing is really not worth it. Moving the buttons around, swapping out your old buttons to a new brand, changing the layout of the board or moving it to a new place can all cause confusion.
In the beginning a lot of learners associate their buttons strongly with their location. Sometimes you’ll move a button just a short way away and your learner will go to the place the button used to be and mime pressing it in the air. It’s so common you’ll see people refer to it as “ghost pressing.” This just shows how complicated this whole thing is for our learners. What is getting the response from us? Is it the object? The noise? The gesture? The location? They’ll usually figure it out as they get more buttons and use them frequently, but early on when they’re still understanding how buttons work, it’s important to make only necessary changes to the board and to make them as slowly as possible. Sometimes folks will think “Oh I’m moving the buttons around and moving the board to a new place, and adding tiles, that’s one change.” Uh uh. That is many changes and a beginner will probably be confused and frustrated, or stop trusting the buttons if things keep changing constantly.
Imagine learning to type and just as you’re starting to get it, somebody swaps all the keys around.
Your learner isn’t pressing buttons because they can’t find them anymore. It can also take a long time to move past because your learner doesn’t know that you won’t do it again. Think of the keyboard analogy again and imagine that somebody has scrambled all your keys once and now they’re trying to get you to learn the new layout. You aren’t sure if another big change is coming. If it is, should you even bother to try?
Moving one button is one change. If you need to make a lot of changes you need to space them out. Also if you’re changing from one type of button to another, it’s not at all obvious to your learner that these new buttons work the same way or mean the same things as the old ones even if you put them in the same layout. Instead of replacing old buttons with new ones, just add a new word - that you don’t have on the soundboard yet - on one of the new buttons. Let your learner get a feel for that button and give them time to see that they work the same way. If that goes well then you can try swapping out an existing button. But also, you can have two kinds of buttons on the board. Human aesthetics (and sometimes space requirements) are the only reason not to. So don’t rush it.
For beginners we recommend waiting at least a week between changes, even if your learner seems to adjust quickly to the first one. As you go along you’ll eventually get a feel for how quickly your individual learner bounces back from change and you can adjust that time period. Some learners manage well with some types of changes but are much more sensitive to others, so don’t make blanket assumptions.
If in doubt, go slow.
Did something else change?
Other changes to the environment, big life events, or just general stress can also cause quiet periods. Did you move? Did you get a new pet? Did somebody recently experience some trauma or are you dealing with a long recovery from a medical situation? Is your learner sick or were they recently? It doesn’t have to be bad stress. Any big life event, whether good or bad, can have an impact on button use. We know of a cat that got free access to a newly cat proof backyard and pretty much stopped using his buttons for three months. It really is just a matter of being patient and letting your learner recover from the stress or acclimate to the new situation (or spend all their time in their new cat paradise).
Any big life event, whether good or bad, can have an impact on button use.
Did you go too fast?
It’s very very easy to go too fast. It takes time to understand the balance between progressing and rushing, and we teachers are learning too. If you have gone too fast though, it’s important to re-evaluate and adjust your approach.
Learning is never constant linear progress. Even if your learner picked up early words quite quickly, that doesn’t mean they will just continue at that pace forever. They’ll naturally plateau for a while and then pick up the pace again.
Our learner’s ability to understand new buttons and words can vary, sometimes in ways we don’t expect. It can take longer to establish meanings as you go from words like “Outside,” “Food,” “Ball,” to words like “Later,” “Concerned,” “Happy,” “Want”. Those concepts are more abstract and can be a little more complicated. We don’t think they’re harder to model, but some learners can take longer to pick up more abstract meanings because they’re newer or less obvious. There also might not be as many opportunities to model them. But seeing that your learner understands their new words before you add more, even if they aren’t pressing those buttons, is a good way to keep a good pace.
Once again, no matter how precocious your learner is, we recommend giving at least a week, ideally two weeks between new words in the beginning. You can add two or even three buttons at a time if it makes sense to add them together, or add a new button if you made a recent change but the perfect modeling opportunity has presented itself, but give them lots of time to sit before making more changes. You don’t need to wait for your learner to use new words perfectly 100% of the time before you move forward (they will never use any word 100% of the time) but make sure you see clear signs that they understand what it means when YOU model those words before you add more.
As you become more practiced you’ll get a much better feel of the pace you should add buttons at. You’ll also start to see how your learner reacts and what they do when they’re unsure of their buttons - like studying them more. If you added a word like “Ouch,” your learner might not use it because they don’t have any pain to talk about. But if you added Ouch and 3 body part words this month and your learner is pressing all of those in lots of ways that don’t make sense, they’re experimenting and we would suggest you don’t add more buttons they don’t understand.
This is a marathon, not a sprint. You’ll be spending years with the buttons, so especially in the early days, Take. Your. Time.
Did you put too much pressure on your learner?
If you’ve been doing tons of prompting or even directing your learner to press buttons, that can cause a lot of frustration, reluctance to press, or even resentment.
We’ve got a whole article on prompting and directing use, so brush up on what those terms mean and get your modeling back in good shape.
It’s really easy to get impatient when your learner isn’t pressing something you think they should understand by now, especially when your learner is or was regularly using their buttons to talk about other things. We’re not judging you for those moments where you’re annoyed, but we do need to remind you that this is learner led communication and it’s up to your learner how, when and if they use buttons. Try to let go of your expectations.
Did your modeling dip?
This is another one that happens to everybody at some point.
Sometimes we’re busy and life gets in the way, but also when our learner is using buttons regularly and clearly, it can be easy to think that they know what they’re doing and you don’t need to model because they don’t need the demonstration anymore.
Modelling is much more than a demonstration of how buttons work. It’s a way of teaching concepts and generalising them, and it’s also the way we show buttons are important and useful ways to communicate. Modelling is communication. And if you’re not using the buttons, your learner may just think “Oh, we’re not doing that anymore.”
Remind your learner by using their buttons lots.
Also check your consistency. If your word use has become less clear then that might be causing confusion - again, this is so easy to slip into over time. Keep your word use consistent with your concepts and try not to use non-button alternatives, like starting to call their breakfast “breakfast” instead of “food”.
I swear I didn’t change anything!
So, you’ve had a good, honest think about the last few weeks and you haven’t had any board or life changes. You’re certain that you haven’t been pressuring or over-prompting your learner to push buttons. You know your modeling has been constant and they really did just go from talkative to silent for no apparent reason…Congratulations, you don’t have a problem!
This kind of quiet period is common and a totally normal part of the learning process. Often this particular kind of quiet period is particularly alarming because it will come after a period of a lot of progress. Of course the research is still out, but our theory is that your learner is just assimilating a lot of knowledge. This type of quiet phase typically lasts a week or two and your learner will probably come out the other side using buttons in a much more sophisticated way than before. Not every learner has phases like this, but most do and typically they go through it more than once.
So how do I fix it?
Model more. It’s important not to let your modeling dip during a quiet period. It’s natural for your button use to lapse when your learner’s does but you’ve got to keep on top of it.
If your quiet period seems to be caused by your board evolving too fast:
If you’ve made too many changes you have three options.
Roll back those changes and put things back the way they were when your learner was last using the buttons, which we recommend if your learner seems completely confused or seriously annoyed by what you’ve done, and doesn’t seem to really understand the changes.
Stick with things as they are and really just model model model your way through it. Model words that are impacted by all your changes lots, but make sure you’re modeling all your learner’s motivating things too. Don’t prompt during this time.
Consider a hybrid of the first two options where you roll the changes partially back. So if you had scattered buttons and you condensed them all in one go, it might be better to move some of them back but not all of them, or move some of them closer to where they used to be but not all the way. If you changed all your buttons at once and your learner is using a few but not all, you might change the ones that your learner stopped using back for now, but keep the ones that they seem to understand.
Which option you go with depends a bit on the scale of the changes and how long it’s been since you did it. If it was a small scale change, say you swapped two buttons around and it was two weeks ago, just model your way through that one. If you made a bunch of big changes very recently, you have more scope to roll back. If you’ve added buttons in a place that your learner doesn’t seem to want to walk and they have never pressed those buttons, you might take them up for now and add them in a more accessible place later, after things have settled.
Don’t make things worse by changing your soundboard even more if your learner is showing signs that they understand their board. The reliability of the soundboard is key, so model for a while and observe. For example, if you notice your learner is talking but certain areas of the board or buttons aren’t being used, focus on modeling. If they still aren’t getting used after a few weeks of modeling then move them.
If the cause is external factors or a dip in modeling:
You know what to do - stop prompting, model more, and relax. This is just one of the many ways your learner communicates with you and you’ll find your way out of this phase in time.
If there’s no obvious cause:
Consider whether it’s time to add a new word or two for concepts that are motivating for your learner. We see lots of occasions where word use explodes after an exciting word hits the board.
Think about your learner’s behaviour and if they seem to be interested in anything different or are using non-verbal communication around certain topics. Maybe your cat is spending a lot of time looking out the window - add a word for that. Is your learner being very picky about the type of play they want? Why not add buttons for a couple of their favorite activities or toys?
If your quiet period has lasted a month or more:
A natural quiet period typically lasts a couple of weeks. If it drags on into a month+, you may need to shake them out of it. Adding a new word or two is a good way to do that if the board has been stable and you’ve consciously been upping your modeling for that time.
If you think you added too many words too quickly or made too many changes to the board too close together, don’t add new words right now. It will confuse your learner even more. In the long run you’ll make more progress by going at a manageable pace than causing fits and starts.
Once again though, don’t panic. Plenty of people started teaching the buttons in 2020, got lost in the weeds and either picked up the buttons or left them out but abandoned them in a corner and then a year or two later decided to dust them off and suddenly the learner is pressing them again! Patience and modeling will eventually get you through any quiet period.
Takeaway points
Quiet periods are very common, so don't worry too much about them when they happen.
Think about what might have caused them and make appropriate plans for your next steps, but mostly…
Model, model, model.
Related and further reading
Prompting
