Autism Spectrum Disorder is a kind of developmental disability that can start showing up at an early age of just 3 years.
Children who are diagnosed with this condition often face difficulty in communicating or interacting socially as they have limited speech and cognitive skills.
Common Speech Issues Associated with Autism
- Uttering cries, grunts, harsh and throaty sounds
- No talking
- Talking or humming in a musical way
- Using robotic speech or foreign sounding words
- Babbling with the word like sounds
- Repeating or parroting what another person says
- Using the right phrases but with inexpressive tone
Common Communication Issues Associated with Autism
- Having trouble with conversational skills
- Facing problems in understanding the meaning of words
- Memorizing things heard without knowing the meaning of the same
- Having trouble with the conversational skills
- Lacking Language Creativity
It is because of the challenges that an autistic child needs to learn more than just how to speak or communicate.
Here are some ways in which speech therapy assists the kids with autism. Just take a look.
- Develop the Ability to Express – This should be done with the help of both the non-verbal and verbal communication. The kids with ASD must be taught about how to exchange ideas with others. This is not just important within the family but also when they move outside of the house and try to bond with the peers.
- Identify the Right Body Language – How to say whether the other person is serious or just joking? How to realise whether a conversation is private or when it is ok to join? The speech therapists can teach kids with ASD how to recognise the subtle physical signals and act accordingly.
- Understand What is Being Said – Speech therapy assists the autistic kids to understand the verbal and non-verbal communication that the other people use. It assists them to recognise the cues like facial expressions and body language. Speech therapy can also help the children with autism communicate without any kind of prompting from others.
- Learn the Pragmatics of Speech – It is always good to know when to say “Good Night” and “Good Morning”. But it is also important that you know whom to say it and when and how to say the same. Speech pragmatics can also assist the autistic child to know the usage of idioms and to use the idioms in the correct way which can be hard for some children with ASD.
- Learn to Communicate in an Understandable Way – Autism, at times, emerges with idiosyncratic pattern of learning and unusual processing of language. Hence kids who have autism have issues developing spoken language. At times, they learn spoken language in chunks and they fail to break them down into individual words and sounds. They may repeat whatever they hear through television repeatedly without understanding what they are saying or knowing the meaning of the individual words. This condition is known as echolalia and with speech therapy, kids can find ways to overcome this condition and other challenges that they face while talking with others.
- Correct the Grammar – Some of the kids with autism have a tough time using the correct grammar even after it has been taught at school or home. They may use incorrect tenses and start using the third person for referring themselves. The speech therapists often work with the autistic kids to correct their mistakes.
The above are some of the ways in which speech therapy assists the kids with Autism to communicate and speak in a way that will help them to be more expressive and understanding all at the same time and thus lead a hassle-free life with least problems of communication.
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