When your child is diagnosed with autism, speech and language therapy is often one of the first and best treatments recommended by all doctors. Our pathologist will explain how speech therapy can help a child with autism.
Speech therapy can play a key role in the treatment of autism:
This type of communication impairment is common in children who are diagnosed with autism. Speech and language therapy often plays a key role in your Early Intervention treatment. It is best to refer children and families to our specialists.
Once autism is diagnosed in children, through speech and language therapy, our professionals will find an improvement in communication and improve their quality of life. With autism, your child speaks little or not at all, our speech and language therapy team can present alternatives to speech, such as the use of signs or the use of technology that supports communication.
How does speech therapy help children with autism?
The main goal of speech and language therapy is to help children improve their communication. A child with autism is especially important because communication is a key component in his ability to form relationships and function in her world.
Speech therapy can often help a child with autism to:
1. Develop the ability to express your wants and needs
This could be through the use of verbal and non-verbal communication. Children with autism need to be taught how to exchange ideas with others.
This is not only important within the family, but also when they move away from home and want to build relationships with their peers.
2. Understand what is being said to them
Speech and language therapy helps children with autism understand the verbal and nonverbal communication used by other people. It also helps them recognize cues like body language and facial expressions.
Speech and language therapy can help an autistic child understand how to initiate communication without being prompted by others.
3. Communicate to develop friendships and interact with peers.
Some children with autism may fight back with the spontaneity and unpredictability of casual conversations. He also has very specific interests and finds it hard to talk about other things.
Speech and language therapy can teach these children strategies for mixing with other children so they can make friends, play games, and experience social success.
4. Learn to communicate in a way that other people understand
Sometimes autism in children can bring with it unusual language processing and idiosyncratic learning patterns. As a result, children with autism often have trouble developing spoken language. Sometimes they learn spoken language in parts without breaking down what they hear into individual words and sounds.
They may repeat long “snippets” of favorite stories or TV shows without really understanding what they are saying or being able to use any of the words in the “snippet” independently. This is called ‘echolalia’ and speech therapy helps children find ways to overcome it and other difficulties that children with autism have when speaking with others.
5. Articulate words and sentences well
Like many neurotypical children, children with autism also have difficulty articulating sounds and placing words in sentences. Many children with autism also have great difficulty with concepts of time, abstract language, and vocabulary whose meaning depends on context.
Nonliteral language like idioms, hints, and indirect instructions can also be tricky. These are areas where a speech pathologist can help a child with autism.
Conclusion:
Autism is usually evident before the age of 3 years, and language delays can be recognized by 18 months of age. In some cases, autism can be identified between 10 and 12 months of age. It is very important to start speech and language therapy for children with autism as early as possible, when it can have the greatest impact.
