by: Amy Shymansky
Many times as young children with autism develop language they develop an ability to imitate language from others to assist in getting their needs met. What a great success to reach this milestone!
Sometimes after language imitation emerges parents report their child uses the language from an inaccurate perspective. For example, if their child wants ice cream, he/she will bring ice cream to the parent and say “Do you want ice cream?”, not because the child is asking the parent if they want ice cream, but because this is what the child has heard from the parent previously before getting the ice cream.
A quick and helpful strategy to use in the home to for parents teach appropriate responding in these situations is to model the language from the child’s perspective. For example, when the child brings ice cream to the parent instead of the parent asking the child “Do you want ice cream?”, the parent can model the appropriate language for the child to imitate (i.e. “I want ice cream.”, “Can I have ice cream?”, etc).
Once your child begins imitating the appropriate response try fading back your prompt (”I want ice cream.”) and adding more natural parent responses (i.e. “What do you want?”, child responds “I want ice cream”) to work toward independent responding with this skill.
