| ADVICE
FOR PARENTS OF CHILDREN WITH AUTISM |
Facilitating
Language Development in Young Autistic Children
- Structure
the child’s environment so that there is a need for
the child to communicate with you.
- Join your
child in his world of play rather than expect him to want
to join you in yours.
- Always
use pictures, signs, or gestures paired with spoken words
in order to increase comprehension.
- Provide
and teach the use of pictures to
 assist
your child to initiate communication.
- Develop
core vocabularies with words representing the following
categories: Actor (names of people and animals), Action
(things that the actors do, e.g., "sit", "eat",
"go", etc.), Object (names of common items in
the environment), Location (places that actions or objects
are found), Modifier (e.g., "big", "little",
"yucky", etc.), Possession (mine), Negation ("no",
"not") Recurrence ("more"), and Introducer
("hi", "bye", etc.).
- Speak/sign
to your child with simple two-word phrases which combine
words from the above categories, e.g., "mommy car,"
"go car," "no car," etc.
- Avoid
using pronouns.
- Avoid
asking questions. Of all the sentence forms used, the question
form is the most difficult to understand. Moreover, it assumes
that the child is on your wavelength and has an answer that
suits you.
- Go for
literacy as a way to teach socially appropriate language.
Go to What
is Autism?
Brendan
O’Connor Webster, M.A., CCC
Speech
and Language Pathologist
Executive Director
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