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I'm currently a sophomore in college looking forward to a career in Speech/Language Pathology. I was wondering if any of you happen to be SLP's/ Speech Therapists or audiologists. I would also like to know about anyone who has a career in which their main goal is to help children. This could be teaching, social work, anything! What do you do, and why do you like it? What's the most rewarding thing about your career?

I worked with Autistic children for a number of years teaching them communication skills such as, speaking in first person. Socialization and cognitive skills. I have used PEC (Picture exchange commuication) to teach non verbal children.

That sounds very interesting. I am interested in learning more about autism and autistic children. I heard about a teenaged girl who created a system to teach autistic children how to read/communicate using a piano keyboard. She would associate a letter/phoneme to a musical note.

Austistic children can become fixated on music or tape stories. The different sounds of music will intrig them to keep there attention. It also depends on the level of Autisim.

There was also a story on Good Morning America where all 6 of a couple's children have autism. 3 have asperger's syndrome and the younger ones have level 1 autism.

"it take a community to raise a child",I beleive that's how it should be.I worked with pre-schoolers with a diversity of problems,Autism being 1,hyper,out of control being at other end of the scale.Not much pay but alot of satisfaction.Also was a "Mentor "to a "Prodigy",actually volunteer worker with a mentally retarded person.Like "big Sisters" in a way,very rewarding,but when I moved I could no longer drive to Cleveland area for my freindas I called her.Not with work and all.

I spent a year working with children that were both deaf and blind, it takes a very special kind of person to be able to do this, I guess I'm not one of those... it was incredibly difficult for me.

I'm not sure that I could do that either. Deaf...I would have to learn sign language (which I plan to do anyway) but I think I could handle it. Blind..sure. Both would be more difficult especially if they were born deaf and blind, or became that way at an early age. It would take a lot of patience to get them to comprehend.

The only communication you have is touch, and they are children and will act out as all kids do, they can't hear disaproval in your voice or see a look of anger in your face. The only way to teach them is with negative and positive touch, having to discipline with a slap on the hand was really tough, you just want to hug them, but if they want to get along in the world they have to learn right from wrong. My hat is off to people who can do this type of work, and anyone who has the patience and love to work with children. I wound up changing my university degree to Business.

I work, and have worked, as both an investigator of child abuse and neglect and as a caseworker with abused and neglected children and their families. It can be a very stressful job and sometimes you feel like you're wasting your time, but then, there are those times when you know you really made a difference and completely changed the direction of a child's life in a positive way and gave him/her a chance to realize his or her potential that he/she wouldn't have otherwise had that makes it all worthwhile...and sometimes they even realize it too....and come back and say "thank you." When that happens, it's icing on the cake.

God bless you and those like you who give a voice to victims of child abuse. I'm sure it's difficult to keep your composure when you KNOW the child is being abused and can't yet prove it. That would drive me INSANE.

There's a video about this on yahoo by the way.