Speech Therapy
The main goal of speech therapy is to ensure that a child can communicate functionally and spontaneously. This means that the child needs to be able to communicate his basic wants and needs in an age-appropriate manner to those around him without any prompting.
Non-Verbal Speech Therapy
Speech Therapy can help children with speech impediments pronounce words correctly, but it also helps children with developmental disorders to understand and use spoken language in a social context.
- Body language: Teach children how to recognize subtle physical signals.
- Asking and answering questions: Develop the ability to ask and answer questions without the help of a therapist; recognize a question and appropriate answers; formulate, ask, and understand the answers to their own questions.
- Speech pragmatics: When, how and to whom to say what; speech pragmatics to help a child understand the meaning of idioms (sometimes hard for people with autism), and to use idioms themselves.
- Prosody: flat prosody causes children to appear emotionless. Speech therapists help children build their vocal skills.
- Grammar: Correct grammar when modeled at home or at school.
- Conversation skills: Speech therapists work on back-and-forth exchange, sometimes known as "joint attention."
- Concept skills: The ability to state abstract concepts doesn't always reflect a child’s ability to understand them. Speech therapists work on building concept skills.
- Social skills: Building social communication skills that include the ability to ask and answer questions, stand at an appropriate distance from a conversational partner, assess the "mood" of a room (or a person), and more.
Non-Verbal Speech Therapy
If the child’s speech is not adequate and functional (the child isn’t talking), various forms of augmentative-alternative communication (AAC) may need to be introduced until a method that works for the child is found. Each child is different so different methods work differently for each child.
Here are a few options that can be tried:
- Voice-Output AAC Device
- Picture Communication System:
- Simple communication board or more complex system like the Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS)
- Sign Language: Sign language has even been shown to get kids talking with their mouths more quickly than they would without using sign language.