Speech therapists and researchers agree that speech and language difficulties and challenges vary greatly between individuals on the spectrum. A speech-language pathologist will help to identify the specific challenges for your child, this may look very different depending where the child finds him or herself on the spectrum.
High-functioning autistic children may need help addressing problems with comprehension and context of speech and language, while a nonvocal child may initially need help imitating speech sounds for preferred objects. Once your child has been evaluated by a speech-language pathologist, you can start working on an at-home plan to further speech and language goals.
At home, you as a parent know best which time of day your child is most likely to feel productive and cooperative. Instead parents may want to concentrate on the words their children need for functional communication and try to use a special interest to make such words more accessible. The best place to get therapy ideas is of course from an experienced speech-language pathologist. Most of what we say is communicated with basic words, which makes it easy to practice important speech and language skills within the context of our daily routines and chores.
Involve your learner and practice understanding and using words and concepts that repeat across activities. Try choosing a word, concept, or speech sound of the day and make a game of practicing it as many times as possible throughout your daily routines.
This is great advice and easy to incorporate at home. Of course you would not want to encourage uneven language development by only facilitating learning in narrow areas of interest.
These are simple strategies that can be used as an entryway to helping your child develop speech and language skills at home. You can take this process to the next level by incorporating learning materials, activities, worksheets and other therapy resources. There are also many free materials and therapy ideas online, some recommended and endorsed by speech-language pathologists. Browsing through countless pages of free materials on the internet may feel overwhelming.
The best place to start is, once again, your knowledge of your child. LaTonya—an autism mom, educator and lawyer who designs content with school districts, companies and organizations on topics including autism, academics and antiracism— shared her experience of homeschooling her child on the spectrum during the pandemic. She continued by emphasizing how such areas of interest could be utilized to promote learning of listening, speaking, and functional skills.
So, in keeping with our example of a child on the spectrum who loves trains, how can parents use knowledge of this special interest to stimulate speech development? Kids on the spectrum are often visual learners and many have razor sharp detail orientated focus. Consider these aspects when putting together materials for at home therapy activities.
A comic strip, for example, could be a useful material to illustrate a speech or language concept to a visual learner. Teachers, parents and speech therapists often share ideas online, some cater specifically to children on the spectrum while others provide materials for specific areas of concern like articulation, grammar, and literacy. The therapy needs of kids on the spectrum vary greatly, many factors including their current speech and language ability will determine the kind of program most appropriate to encourage better communication.
Most autistic children also have sensory processing difficulties, a condition like auditory processing disorder could influence the way speech and language is developed and acquired. Working with your child in areas of learning like literacy, grammar or articulation may not be of much worth until your speech-language pathologist addresses issues like sensory processing difficulties or conditions like childhood apraxia of speech discussed above.
Furthermore, the spectrum nature of autism means there is no set plan to help children improve speech and language skills. Children on the spectrum who are nonvocal will need specific early intervention programs, their therapy needs will differ from those of a child with typical language development struggling with the subtleties of social communication. The benefits of speech therapy for children with autism are plentiful—the power of expression rates highly among these. Parents often share sadness at how much their kids struggle with frustration, because they lack the means to express themselves.
Most children experience feelings of being small in a big world, with too little control over their lives. Their way of exercising control over their environment is often by expressing needs, wants, feelings and frustrations. American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders 5th ed. Brundage, S. Brief report: treating stuttering in an adult with autism spectrum disorder.
Journal of autism and developmental disorders , 43 2 , — Mody, M. With as many as 8 templates covering topics that range from washing hands to a trip to Los Angeles, it is quite a bargain for the price!
And yes, you can enhance the role-play by creating your own stories too. But if you can afford it, and you own an iPad, it might be well worth the investment! It is one of the few apps that can boast of a rare 5 review from parents, teachers and speech therapists! Autism Tracker is a life changing app for families having kids with Autism. This app helps you track the elements that matter to the development of your autistic child. You can use multi-item graphs, visual calendars, and discussion patterns to help you organize a day in life of a child with autism.
Also, available is the free Lite version for trial use. Though fully customizable, Autism Tracker Pro allows has a range of preset options to address the special needs of your special child. Pictello — A storytelling App for Autism. All children learn well better through stories.
This is especially true for children with Autism. Developing social skills through pictures and stories have been one of the most effective Autism teaching strategies — and Pictello allows you to do just that! With Pictello, you can easily turn pictures and videos into an interactive storybook. Each page in a particular Pictello story may contain a picture, a pre-recorded sound and up to 5 lines of text. It also has a range of included voices that allows you to add text to speech capabilities.
Anything out of the schedule and they would either act out, or even worse, resort to aggressive tantrums. First Then Visual Schedule HD is an Autism app that helps such kids to self-manage their schedule and prepare for the unexpected.
Most of us, who has experience in teaching children with autism, will agree that teaching them basic mathematics is one tall task. This app intends to turn maths oriented study time to a bit of fun and play. Starting from basics, all the way to middle school mathematics, this app covers a lot of chapters along with relevant and intuitive exercises.
Preference and Reinforcer Assessment app for Autism. This app is not for your child but for you! It is geared more towards professionals, parents, and caregivers who deal with autism on a day to day basis. By allowing you to run a preference assessment, this app can substantially influence the course of autism treatment for your child.
The key feature of this app is to provide you a range of assessment tools that can automatically calculate the result of your tests and equip you with the information required for the next course of action. As a parent or a caregiver, using positive reinforcement is one of the proven techniques to treat Autism or similar syndromes and this app allows you to manage those responses.
Though quite a few apps, that help with organization skills, have already been discussed, this one still deserves a special mention!
Because it teaches one of the most essential skills to an autistic child — how to be patient and wait for his or her turn. And, even better, it does so by giving your child options to better utilize the waiting time by practicing other skills, thereby killing two birds with one stone metaphorically.
Many parents have reported significant productivity improvements in their child upon use of this application. Some therapists argue, and rightly so, that Play Therapy is among the best techniques available for effectively honing the interactive skills of a child with Autism. With over 1 million iTunes downloads, My Playhome is meant for any child in need of an imaginative play.
The game is all about an iDoll House, where everything in that house from the TV to the oven is in working condition. Just take a look at some of the reviews in iTunes to get what I mean. Yet, it is such an important component in order to become a productive member of the society. The Time Timer displays time in relation to a red disc that keeps getting smaller as time passes.
This helps autistic kids stay on focus as they begin to realize the value of time. There have often been cases where kids tend to get anxious and even get panic meltdowns if subjected to substantial time pressure. A fun way to implement this in the home is to sort pictures that you draw, cut out of magazines, etc.
Group pictures together according to similar attributes whether it is foods you eat, fruits and vegetables, or things you wear. Mix and match the pictures to help your child identify problems with pictures and solutions to fix the problems.
For toddlers, you can have your child sort things according to color and shape. Puzzles are an excellent way for toddlers to sharpen their problem-solving skills because they need to find a way to make pieces fit where they belong. Reading has always been an encouraging activity to do when you have a child with ASD or TD typical developing. Engage in conversation about the book. Ask questions about the characters in a yes or no format.
Facial muscle activities are important for children with weakened oral motor skills. Facial muscle tone can have an effect on speech articulation in your child.
Picture boards are an important form of communication with ASD children that have communication and language difficulties. You can use a picture board to help your child understand the order of when to do different activities. A large percentage of children with ASD are known to have sensory processing disorder. This affects the way that their brain processes, understands, interprets, and receives information through their senses.
New words are introduced by exploring the senses and communication is accomplished by interacting with your child and asking questions. Example: I use sensory bins and bottles with my son, and I fill the bottles with water and glitter. He shakes the bottle or spins them around to watch the glitter move.
I will then ask him to show me how the glitter moves and things along those lines. Many children with ASD enjoy sing-along exercises, and it can help them recognize words and associate sounds with objects. This introduces your child to new words and sounds on top of associating words and sounds. You can grab one of their favorite toys like a truck or car and imitate the sounds that a car makes while telling your child what you are doing.
This helps your child form sentences and put words together. As you can see the activities are fun and easy to do, and most of them are expanding on play activities with your child. This is what makes it easy to incorporate these communication skills into everyday life outside of therapy. We hope you enjoyed this article.
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