Friday, February 16, 2018
All children have the right to communicate. No disorder, disease, or physical limitation should be able to take that right away from them.
For that reason, it is our obligation to make sure that all children with autism have SOME way to communicate with us. Speaking may be too hard for them so sometimes we need to come up with other ways of helping them communicate.
The first thing that we need to consider for a non-verbal or minimally-verbal child with autism is whether or not speaking is real option for them.
We can do this by asking the child to imitate basic speech tasks, like saying words or making sounds. If the child is able to say words or make sounds in order to get something that he or she really wants, then we can say that speaking is definitely the best way to go to help that child communicate with us.
Speech is always the first option and we would love for all of our students with autism to speak to us.
However, some children simply aren’t able to talk right now, but that doesn’t mean that we give up on them and don’t provide them with an alternative. If speech isn’t a viable option for the child you’re working with, there are other avenues we can work towards, connect with us today.
