YES! Try with all you can to do ABA. It isn't like speech therapy. It helped us tremendously!Some people have told me that speech hasn't done hardly anything for their ASD kids. They say that it's because it's been geared toward NT people and that the whole point is that ASD kids don't pick up language in the same manner as NT's. It helped us to implement pec's but not much else. Pec's gets ASD kids talking in my opinion and should be the first thing tried when there is a significant delay in verbal communication. i have 3 different speech therapy for my son because it is hard to find aba at the place we are living. do you think its enogh or i should search mor for aba for speech. my son is 5 he has words not sentences.
We did VB/ABA and speech with Sarah and the speech therapy was not worth it...ABA teaches in a completely different mode that our kids respond too. I did have some success with a speech path 3 years later that had over 20 years of teaching kids with autism and she was wonderful but by this time Sarah had language and she used the time to teach pragmatics and social stories to get her to express herself more. The first years of 2 hours of speech a week was spent doing games, flashcards and articulation...Sarah was bored but I wanted her to generalize her learning from different types of teachers and not just ABA style. We finally quit when she detested going too much. They do have some good ABA books to do ABA yourself if you have a strong will:)
"Behavioral Interventions for children with autism" by Catherine Maurice
"A work in progress"
"Teach me language"
Some brand new ones are out now that may be even better:) All ABA teaching is based on working for rewards so make a list of what your child loves the most and gather them up and go and get a treasure box of novel things he has to work for...dollar store has tons of cool things:) Do a few minutes of teaching at a time at their level and reward heavily...increase the minutes when they are ready. We started at 5 minutes at a time and by time she progressed out of ABA she could of sat for hours if we asked her..she got breaks every 20 minutes but promptly came back to table or floor or wherever in the house we were working at the time:) It is a process of teaching just sounds at first...then close utterances of words..then actual word...2 words..sentences:) Takes months of consistency on everyone involve with your child. He will protest loudly and you will feel like a horrible mom for doing this therapy but I promise the worse tantrums brought about the biggest progress...they hate change and compliancy to others when they much rather do what they want...it is a very hard thing to break but necessary. Sorry I ranted way too long:) Good luck:)
I think speech will help. But it does not take the place of ABA. VB/ABA did