Hello,

Did anyone's ASD kid have good receptive language and then later see an increase in expressive. Our 17 month old has been able to point to people and objects when named for several months but still doesn't have a single word. Not even mama or dada. He does babble a lot though. It seems like he might try to say kitty and will sometimes say hi. He seems to imitate better than he used to but won't intitiate anything. If we even mention the word popsicle, he runs to the freezer.

He will try and find his shoes if asked but doesn't EVER intitiate or try to say words. He does see early intervention and a speech therapist but there hasn't been any improvement with expressive language. He will point to what he wants and grunt.

We have bought the Baby Bumblebee and babble videos. He enjoys them but they haven't helped him develop langauge. We read to him constantly and obviously talk to him a lot.

Does anyone have suggestions that worked for their child in helping bring on expressive language to a kid that has pretty solid receptive skills? Thanks.


John

Maybe you can try animal sounds.
It seems like a lot of kids first words are those. They seem easier. When you make a animal sound you seem to use more of your jaw than you tongue. Mooing elongates your mouth, eeeeee for a monkey widens your mouth.
When he babbles is he making a full range of sounds? or is most of the sound like a deee dee, eeee as if he is not using his whole mouth to make sounds, just a tight jaw?

Wow!

We have seen the same with our son. He is now 3 1/2 and is beginning to use functional language. He was the same way in the beginning with the pointing and grunting and if we mentioned something he would know what we were talking about, but would not say anything. We are still working on expressive language.

He now tells us what he wants by using one or two words. Example: "want juice", "sucker", "open", etc. Can you believe it, we couldn't be happier? Isn't it funny what we get excited about?

We tried ABA for a year and it did not work out for us, but my son has speech and OT twice a week. It will come for your child, just have him say what he wants each time by manding (you say the item and he repeats you and then gives you an independant response). Stay consistent.:)

Try songs, like nursery rhymes. Lots of kids start talking by kind of humming and approximating words of a song that they hear often enough to memorize. When you're driving around in the car with your baby play music and sing along. Laurie Berkner is great.

Try uh-oh. Kids pick that up quickly. They understand when to say it, when something falls or goes wrong, and it's easy to say.

Lots of speech therapists also use facial massage with kids who have autism. They rub their cheeks and lips gently. They also will use their hands to open and close the child's jaw. It works especially well for some children with Autism because it can be like a stim for them. Afterwards some kids will even babble a bit.

Make eye contact with your baby and repeat "bababababa" and "mamamama". These are easy sounds that babies first make when they start to babble. They may try to imitate you.

:)

Throw out the baby videos. Children need live language models, not 2 dimensional ones. There was a an intriguing piece of research where 2 groups of English speaking toddlers were exposed to a woman teaching Chinese: One group had the real person , the other group saw the exact same thing , but through a video monitor. The video monitor kids learned fewer words than the live model.

The more time a child spends sitting looking at a screen, no matter how well marketed, is time away from listening to a real person, even if that person is no talking directly to the child. Kids learn by over hearing people talk, too.