In the latest SANA blog post, the third in a four-part series, social worker and speech and language pathologist Megan Lyons offers a multitude of tips for utilizing everyday activities to promote communication at home. In this third part, she discusses tips for helping children understand language. Check out part one for tips for helping children with imitation skills, and part two for helping children with turn-taking skills!
Use everyday activities to incorporate language-building into your child’s routines.
During natural routines, monitor how your child is responding to your language. This is important because some young children with ASD have relatively greater difficulties with language comprehension compared to expressive language skills. Therefore, your child may need repetitive and focused opportunities to learn how to link words with people, objects, and activities. The following are strategies to promote receptive language skills in everyday activities:
- Initially, capture your child’s attention. Get down on your child’s level and communicate face-to-face so he or she can see your eyes, mouth, and facial expressions.
- Use single words or short phrases to simplify messages. During a preferred activity, such as building with blocks, use lots of single words and phrases to talk about the activity. For example, use the word “up” every time the child adds a block to a tower or count the blocks as they are stacked (e.g., “One block”, “two blocks”, “three blocks” …). Give your child the opportunity to respond to your language and offer them support to follow your simplified language as needed.
- Spend short periods of time observing your child during everyday routines for opportunities to engage in comprehension-building. For example, when you and your child are dressing in the morning, and they are holding their socks or shoes, use those words to talk about getting dressed (e.g., “socks on”, “red socks”, “shoes on feet”, “tie shoes”).
- Use family-specific or child-specific words in simple phrases that are important for your child to learn. Talking directly to your child with simplified language connected to play routines, again, helps them directly link objects and people with actions. For example, if your family enjoys cooking, use simple phrases while playing with a kitchen set or cooking bowls such as “mommy cook”, “cut tomato”, or “Elmo eat” so that they can eventually understand simple sentence structure connected to family routines.
- Children with language delays often rely on visual cues when they don’t understand the words or sentences used. Therefore, use gestures such as pointing to direct your child’s attention to objects or making sure objects are in their line of vision so that they know what you are talking about (i.e., shared attention). Likewise, social stories, as well as books with sound and picture cards can help your child better understand the actions associated with an event or object.
- When it comes to giving familiar directions or commands (e.g., “go sit at the table”), you may need to repeat the directions multiple times. For example, if it’s dinner time, use basic gestures such as patting the chair to let your child know you want them to sit, or show them their plate and cup. Once they are routinely following directions and commands that are simply stated, begin to reduce the number of visual cues used and begin to add more parts to familiar directions.
Resources:
- https://www.boardmakeronline.com
- https://autismspeaks.org ;
- https://www.rif.org
- Social Story Creator & Library; Touch Autism (communication application for iOs)