How to support autistic children with communication skills at home

Many parents or carers of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) want to do all they can to support the communication skills of their child at home. However, it can be difficult to know how best to achieve this. Below are some great ideas and strategies for supporting communication skills through everyday activities:

Support Early Interaction Skills

Early interaction skills are the prerequisite skills, or building blocks, a child needs before they are able to start using language. These include skills such as attention, listening, turn taking and understanding. 

1. Call your child’s name and encourage them to look at you, reward this by providing something exciting such as blowing bubbles. 

2. Play ‘Ready Steady Go’ games, and encourage your child to wait for the ‘Go!’ before doing the activity (rolling a ball back and forth, putting a car down a track, knocking down a tower). Try to slow down the ‘ready steady’ section gradually, to further engage your child in having to wait for the ‘go!’

3. When looking through familiar books, encourage anticipation of the next page/ lifting a flap e.g. Then he turned into a…….. Beautiful butterfly!

4. Play games which involve you and your child taking turns. Do plenty of modelling e.g. “Mummy’s turn… *child’s name*’s turn!”. It is easier to do this when you can keep hold of all the items, and give them to your child just on their turn e.g. In a tower building activity, you keep hold of all the blocks and model “mummys turn” whilst you put a block on, then hand the next block to your child and say “*child’s name*’s turn!”

Model Model Model

The way we learn language is through hearing words used lots of times in lots of different contexts. Modelling words to your child is the most helpful way to encourage both the understanding and use of language. 

1. Keep your language simple and emphasise key words. Instead of saying “Let’s go to the park and play on the swings”, instead say “*child’s name*PARK, play SWINGS”

2. Reduce background noise such as TV or radio

3. Follow your child’s leads and interests, they will be more engaged in activities they have chosen, and more receptive to language based around these interests

4. Model words and sentences around what your child is doing. Be repetitive in modelling the key words e.g. “ohh CAR. You have a FAST CAR. Oh no! CRASH. The CAR went CRASH!”

5. Model words and sentences around what you are doing around your child. Being in the car, on the bus, on the beach, on a walk, in the supermarket, even doing laundry or washing up provide modelling opportunities e.g. Mummy’s washing the cup, Daddy’s smelly socks, I see apples and pears, ohh BIG dog

6. If your child does use some single words, encourage 2 word utterances by repeating the word and adding another word e.g. If your child says “car”, you could say “fast car”, or “blue car”, “mummy’s car”, “vrooooom car”.

7. During play, model verbs/ doing words that your child does or you can manipulate a toy to do e.g. Jump jump jumping, Teddy’s eating yummy, kicking kicking!

8. Use naturalistic gesture to support understanding e.g. a drinking action when you say “juice”

Comments Over Questions

When a child is not using spoken language, or using very little, the temptation can be to ask a lot of questions or try to ‘make’ the child copy language. This is not an effective way of teaching language and often can lead to frustration from both the child and the parent/care giver. Instead, try these strategies:

1. Make comments instead of asking questions e.g. Instead of saying “what have you got there?”, model “You have a car!”

2. Use the rule of 5, for every 1 question you ask, follow this up with 4 comments

3. If you do ask your child a question and they do not answer, answer your own question to model to them how they could have answered it e.g. “What colour is that car?... It’s a BLUE car, that car is BLUE”.

4. Don’t put pressure on your child to copy words from you e.g. “Say car, say car!”. Saying these words can be really tricky for children, and they may need more time listening to you saying it before they feel comfortable to attempt it themselves

Create Opportunities for Communication

Every day tasks and activities make for great communication learning opportunities for our children, but we need to ensure we are utilising all the opportunities available throughout the day. Even if your child is not talking yet, they can still have a ‘communicative turn’ through non verbal communication, and this in turn will support their interaction skills

1. Give choices frequently throughout the day, even if you know what your child wants/ will pick. Do this by presenting them with 2 items and naming these “Do you want milk, or juice?”. Regardless of if your child says ‘juice’, points to juice, tries to grab at the juice, you can use this as a chance to model the words “Oh you want juice, let’s get you some juice”

2. Put your child’s favourite toys/ food/ items in a place where they are able to see it, but not reach it themselves (such as a high shelf, or in a clear plastic tub with a lid) This means your child has to communicate with you that they would like help. They may do this initially through crying/ pointing/ using a word. At this stage, you can model the word for your child “Help, you want help. Mummy can help you”.

3. Give your child some novel situations and watch for their response e.g. a yoghurt with no spoon (or a spoon that’s far too big for the pot!), a packet of crisps unopened, putting their shoe on and THEN their sock. Observe how your child responds, and then model language around this e.g. “Uh oh! Mummy put your SOCK on top of your SHOE! Silly mummy…”

4. To encourage the use of the word ‘more’, give your child food a little bit at a time e.g. one crisp at a time, break a biscuit up into smaller pieces. When your child has finished the first helping, watch and wait to see what they do to indicate to you they want more. This may be pointing, grabbing, crying or simply looking. Again, at this stage you can model the language “more? You want more snack? Ok, here’s more snack”

Here at Acorn Autism, we work closely with Parents and Caregivers to empower them with the knowledge and skills they need to support their children’s communication at Home. Please contact us if you would like further information on how we can support your child’s communication.