By Renee Larr
Fishers resident Carla Butorac has written a book to help children on the autism spectrum with the use of idioms in everyday language.
Children with autism tend to have a more literal interpretation of phrases like, “I call shotgun.” The book, “Scripting with Idioms,” offers a definition for each idiom and a script of how to use the phrase in a social setting.
“It’s basically everyday scripts in social situations for those students that have issues with figurative language,” she said. “It puts these idioms in actual social scripts so that the student can, number one, get practice using them and, number two, see from the context of the interactions what those idioms means.”
Butorac is a speech pathologist. Five years ago, she started her website, behaviorcommunicates.com, to help teachers and parents who work with or have special needs children.
“I do everything from special education strategy, reviewing apps, interviews, etc.” Butorac said.
The inspiration for the book came from her interaction with a child with autism.
“I was in charge of working on his social skills. I realized if I used any of these idioms he couldn’t respond. He had no response. He kind of inspired me to write this book because there wasn’t anything where all these phrases were in one place. They certainly weren’t written in script form,” she said.
The book offers 775 definitions and 103 scripts.
“We find that it’s not enough just to memorize the idioms. You get further with these students if you put them in a contextual situation where they can gain some meaning,” Butorac said. “They don’t have the comprehension of what a statement like an idiom really means. It interferes with talking to people and listening to people.”
The book is available for purchase on amazon.com.
