Verbal Autism – Stirring A Conversation & Igniting A Response

Non-verbal and verbal autism are two of the most common characteristics of the disorder. Verbal capability is a challenge faced by parents, educators, and therapists. Still, with appropriate approaches, children with autism can gain success in overcoming their verbal flaws.

Repetitive 

Individuals with verbal autism are fluent in talking, but not completely free from language and communication challenges. Some of their behaviors include echolalia (echoing words), mimicking movie dialogues or songs and saying idiosyncratic phrases that contain non-meaningful sounds such as squealing, screaming, etc. In short, a person with verbal autism speak in a sin-song voice, imitate and make sounds, with their mouth, without any meaning and purpose.

Narrow Interests And Excellent Abilities

Although some children are able to deliver a speech about a topic based on their interest, they fail to maintain a two-way discussion about the same topic. Some of the children with verbal autism have ‘savant’ skills and abilities in areas such as memorization, maths, and music or calendar calculation.

Uneven Development

Some of the children with autism are able to read words and sentences, but may not understand what they have read. They often do not respond to their own name, and sometimes mistaken to have a hearing problem.

 Treating Verbal Or Speech Issues In Autism

A child having verbal behavior autism needs the services of various specialists, such as a speech-language therapist. Speech therapy is useful in treating individuals with speech, and language disorders.  Improving speech and language skills are the foremost goals of speech therapy. In addition, the therapist also undertakes a few hearing tests to confirm that the child’s hearing is normal.

Establish Functional And Unprompted Communication

The foremost aim of speech therapy is to assure that the child indulges in an unprompted speech and communicate her basic needs and wants. The therapist works hard to confirm that the child speaks when told to, or respond to questions with a sensible reply. He also works on erasing the number of ‘prompts’ (visual cues at times) to help them create sentences in their own words. Later, they use a number of ‘fading prompts’ to help the child speak more independently.

The therapist also teaches the child the golden rules (of ‘please, sorry and thank you’) to motivate him in taking part or stirring up a conversation with proper greeting words.

Once the child with verbal behavior autism begins to make progress, the plans are further strategized to address some minor issues that may impact the child’s communication.   The few areas that need to be addressed:

• Speech and sound faults
• Problem related to asking or answering questions
• Difficulty in deciphering the figurative language

Parents and caretakers must make it a point to talk to the kids, inquire about what they want, keep the conversation to the point, and talk to them when they feel comfortable. Constant boosting can gradually help the child to give a proper response and also initiate a two-way conversation.