Category: Language

The Power of (Using) Explanations!

“Our children and adults on the Autism Spectrum often experience the world around them as chaotic, disorganized, and unpredictable. Social relationships can be especially challenging, and they do not always understand subtle social cues. For many of our children and adults on the spectrum… it can be a mystery, why their caregivers (and the people in their lives) want…
Read more

Help Your Highly Verbal Child Answer Personal Questions

“If you have a child or adult (on the Autism Spectrum) who is highly verbal and can answer questions about factual information (e.g ‘Where is the soccer ball?’ ‘Who is the girl wearing the red coat?’ ‘Which character is this in the book?’), but they seem to have a challenge answering personal questions (that require…
Read more

Talking Less Encourages More Language

“Us adults tend to talk a lot when we are with our children with Autism. We can ply our children with lots of questions, we make many requests of our children, and sometimes we actually become flat-out “Motor Mouths” around our children. One of our children’s challenges is verbal communication, so inspiring them to talk…
Read more

Encouraging Spontaneity for a Child or Adult on the Autism Spectrum

“Prompting or assisting our children to learn certain skills can be very helpful in the early stages of teaching a new skill. However, eventually, we would want our children to be able to use that skill spontaneously (on their own, without the prompt) for the skill to have an impact in their lives. For example,…
Read more

A Game for Socialization Created For a Highly Verbal Teenager

Many parents want game ideas for their highly verbal teenage and adult children on the Autism Spectrum. Here is a game that I created for a 16-year-old man that we worked with a few weeks ago! I hope that this game inspires you to come up with one of your own! One of the goals…
Read more

Four Reasons to Stop and Listen When Helping Your Child Talk

Imagine that your child is already trying to talk. Now, entertain the idea that your son, or daughter may already be saying words, or parts of words. Open your heart up to the belief that your child is trying to verbally communicate every single day. Because, when we believe that our children are trying to…
Read more

Language Delay Solutions and Tips

A 2-year-old child is a wonder to behold. Week to week, and even day-to-day, it can seem that the face and body are constantly transforming, and your child’s unique personality really starts to come out. But what if your 2-year-old is not talking yet? What if you’re not seeing all the dynamic changes and growth…
Read more

Inspiring Your Child to Verbally Communicate instead of using other forms of communication (PECS, Sign Language, Apps)

When you have a child on the autism spectrum, you are faced with so much information. There are a multitude of different approaches and ideas that are available to you. You can often feel overwhelmed in your quest to support your child in the best way possible, and be a little lost at what to…
Read more

Franco

This is Franco and me. As you can see he is a very handsome 14 year old. Some of his greatest loves in life are his Mom, putting colored glue in the palm of his hand and peeling it off, pop music and food.. He has the sweetest eyes, is incredible fun to play with…
Read more

Simple as “ABC”.

Hello Everyone, I am posting this blog from Argentina, where I have been doing outreaching with the most amazing and inspiring Son-Rise Program families! To Matias, Julia and Franco I send you my love, kisses and admiration for working so hard and making so many changes!  I will blog later about my experiences here, but…
Read more