Autistic children often face significant communication challenges, impacting their ability to understand and interpret language. Speech therapy is a crucial intervention designed to enhance all aspects of communication in children with ASD.
Discover a range of easy and enjoyable speech therapy exercises that can help strengthen your child’s communication skills. These exercises, easily incorporated into daily routines, improve verbal and nonverbal communication while also addressing challenges like feeding difficulties, social interaction issues, and more.
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Speech Practice Flashcards for Children
1. Offering choices
Offering choices helps with many things, including:
- interactions with others,
- using gestures and eye contact,
- functional communication, and
- development of vocabulary.
The exercise encourages your child to point to what they want and associate it with its name.
Examples of how to offer choices:
- At mealtime, take 2-3 of your child’s favorite foods and let your child choose what they would like to eat. If it’s hot dogs and chicken nuggets, ask your child while pointing to the item: “Do you want hotdogs or chicken nuggets?”
- When you are dressing your child in the morning, let your child pick what color socks to wear. Again, hold up two choices and point to each option as you ask, “Do you want to wear this color or that color?”
The goal of the exercise is to get your child to point to the item or verbally select the preferred item.
2. Teaching essential skills
Essential words that can be used in multiple situations are essential in helping autistic children communicate. The most common words and signs taught in speech therapy include:
- “more,”
- “open,”
- “done,” and
- “help.”
If your autistic child is nonverbal or has a limited vocabulary, they can express basic needs and wants by using the essential words.
In the home, you can start with the word more and use it at mealtimes. Serve your child a small portion of food at mealtimes. When they have finished eating what is on their plate, model the sign for “more” while saying the word.
If this is the first time you will attempt this exercise with your child, you may need to prompt them.
This exercise is designed to teach your child how to communicate what they want. If your child says the word or signs the word, they have successfully completed the exercise.
Its beneficial to kids who are unable to verbally or nonverbally communicate their wants and needs.
3. Playing matching or sorting games
Categorizing or sorting objects helps your child grasp their purpose and recognize similarities and differences between them. This therapy exercise can also enhance your child’s problem-solving skills.
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.
4. Reading with your child
Reading has always been an encouraging activity to do when you have an autistic or typically-developing child. As you are reading to or with your child, point at each picture, and tell your child what they are looking at.
Depending on the level of your child’s communication skills, you can ask questions about the pictures or have your child point at them. For example, if you are looking at a book with animal pictures, if there’s a yellow duck, ask your child to point to it.
Engage in conversation about the book. Depending on your child’s developmental age, you can take turns asking questions about the book. Ask questions about the characters in a yes or no format.
5. Engaging in facial muscle activities
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. Practice making funny faces and sounds with them. Have them imitate you.
You might wish to do this exercise with your child every day, especially in front of a mirror, so they can see if they are making the same movements with their mouth.
6. Using picture boards
Picture boards are an important form of communication with ASD children who have communication and language difficulties. You can use a picture board to help your child understand the order of when to do different activities.
For example, a picture of a kid playing can represent playtime, and a picture of a kid eating can represent mealtime. Tell your child, “First is mealtime, then it’s playtime.”
7. Engaging in sensory activities
A large percentage of autistic people struggle with sensory processing, which affects the way their brain processes, understands, interprets, and receives information through their senses.
Sensory play is designed to expose your child to a number of communication skills by using their senses.
Sensory exercises are done using sensory toys, bins, bottles, and/or bags. By exploring the senses, new words are introduced, and communication is accomplished by interacting with your child and asking questions.
Example: I use sensory bins and bottles with my son. I fill the bottles with water and glitter. He shakes the bottles or spins them around to watch the glitter move. I then ask him to show me how the glitter moves and other things along those lines.
8. Using sing-along exercises
Many autistic children enjoy sing-along exercises, which can help them recognize words and associate sounds with objects. In addition to associating words and sounds, this activity introduces your child to new words and sounds.
Example: I sing the song “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” with my son because it teaches him different sounds to make, what animals are on a farm, and the sounds that the animals make.
Another song I use with my son is “Wheels on the Bus.” I will ask my son what the horn and door do and make the sounds with him, encouraging him to imitate me.
9. Engaging in play activities
Engaging in regular play activities with your child is a great way to communicate with them and build their vocabulary. 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.
Integrating communication skills into daily life
These autism speech therapy exercises are fun and easy to do, and most of them expand on play activities with your child. This is what makes it easy to incorporate these communication skills into everyday life outside of therapy.
When you are a parent or caregiver actively involved in your child’s therapy, you are helping your child have a reason to communicate and use this on a daily basis.
Working with a speech therapist or a speech-language pathologist is recommended for guidance and support with these exercises and to help your child improve their language skills.
FAQs
Q: What are some speech therapy activities for nonverbal autism?
A: Activities like using picture exchange systems and engaging in nonverbal communication games can help. Interactive apps and tools that promote visual and tactile learning are also beneficial.
Q: Can you do speech therapy yourself?
A: While you can use strategies and activities from speech therapy, professional guidance is recommended for a tailored approach. Therapists can provide targeted techniques and monitor progress effectively.
Q: How do you use speech therapy at home?
A: Incorporate speech therapy exercises into daily routines by using visual aids and practicing communication skills in natural settings. Consistent practice and positive reinforcement can enhance progress.
Q: What age is best to start speech therapy?
A: To address communication delays effectively, starting speech therapy as early as possible, typically around 18 months to 2 years, is ideal. Early intervention can significantly improve outcomes.
References
Tosh, R., Arnott, W. and Scarinci, N. (2017), Parent-implemented home therapy programmes for speech and language: a systematic review. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 52: 253-269. https://doi.org/10.1111/1460-6984.12280
Giuseppe Desolda, Rosa Lanzilotti, Antonio Piccinno, and Veronica Rossano. 2021. A System to Support Children in Speech Therapies at Home. In Proceedings of the 14th Biannual Conference of the Italian SIGCHI Chapter (CHItaly ’21). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 36, 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1145/3464385.3464745
Alias, A., & Ramly, U. (2021, April). Parental Involvement in Speech Activities of Speech Delayed Child at Home. In 2nd International Conference on Technology and Educational Science (ICTES 2020) (pp. 217-222). Atlantis Press. https://www.atlantis-press.com/proceedings/ictes-20/125955281