Natashia Kletter never imagined she would develop a line of books specifically engineered to help neurodiverse children communicate. But when her son Kenny was diagnosed with autism at the age of three, she knew there was nothing she wouldn’t do to help him succeed.
“Every mom strives to do what they can to give their child better opportunities, regardless of the child’s development,” Kletter explained.
And for Kenny – who experts predicted would never learn to speak – those opportunities largely hinged around communication.
“We were fully anticipating that he would be nonverbal for life,” Kletter said. “But it felt like the [communication] tools that were being used were archaic.”
Those tools included a host of assistive communication devices that were largely parent-centric and, on the whole, not overly successful.
“I was, like, if I could put all these pieces together in one soundboard book, and reduce the extra images, we could speak his language and not expect him to speak ours,” Kletter said of the inspiration that would eventually become a whole line of books aimed at giving children the tools to communicate using photographs and signs.
Inspired, Kletter – who has a bachelor’s degree in engineering – began experimenting, first by reengineering one of Kenny’s communication apps. Building on the observation that he was more drawn to photographs than to the line drawings most systems utilized, she filled the newly built application with people he knew, foods he liked to eat and places he would recognize.
“I rebuilt it with his favorite things,” Kletter said. “It was a lot of observing and maximizing on his interests and skills.”
But all the effort was worth it, Kenny was thriving. And Kletter began working on a way to help other kids as well.
“The design component came together for the books and I approached my aunt and uncle,” Kletter recalled. “They partnered with me and funded my efforts.”
The first book the team produced, I Want to Tell You… I Love You!, came out a short time later, just as the family was moving from Woodburn to their new home in Silverton in 2019. Based around core communication – with simple words and phrases like: play, all done, eat, drink and help – the book was immediately met with requests for more.
“The feedback from moms was, ‘Where’s the rest?’” Kletter laughed. “And so, we had to scramble.”
Six more color-coded books soon joined the series with titles like, I Can Do It, How I Feel and Let’s Eat.
“There are a lot of design features that are subliminal,” Kletter said of the books’ layout, which is similar to the sound board books many parents are familiar with utilizing thick, paperboard pages and a set of buttons along one side.
“I wanted to have a lot of white space,” she added. Noting that, unlike the busy pages of many children’s books, each page in Kletter’s series contains only a simple photograph – often demonstrating the ASL sign – and the corresponding word or phrase.
“It was really important that nothing was lost,” Kletter explained. The representation of each and every carefully chosen element was also important to Kletter. Which is why the photographs feature children of multiple genders, skin colors, sizes and abilities. And for the Let’s Eat! book she did a poll of the most popular children’s foods.
“I’m in an autism parents’ group,” Kletter noted. “I asked, ‘What does your child eat?’”
Once complete, Kletter began marketing the books at conferences, through presentations to school districts and via a host of conversations with other moms. Unfortunately, the 2020 pandemic put all of those efforts, for the most part, on hold.
“I sell them online and we have had a pandemic sale since it started,” Kletter said. Explaining, “It’s more important that people are able to communicate than the profit.”
Kletter – whose son began speaking verbally after six long years – knows just how life-changing the ability to communicate with a child can be.
“You just work so hard for those developmental inches – not miles,” Kletter pointed out. “And living in the autistic world, connection is everything.”
That sentiment is something Kletter brings to her company as well, striving to maintain a personal connection with each and every customer by selling the books only via her personal website.
“It’s not just a sale, I want to hear your story and that doesn’t exist on Amazon,” she emphasized. “I don’t want to lose that connection.”
For more information or to purchase the books go to www.iwanttotellyoubooks.com/books.
