I have two autistic children, and have worked with dozens more families. When they begin speaking depends on so many things, not just how old they are. You must look at the severity of their disability, their current deficits and most importantly how much therapy they are receiving (and from whom¡the best speech therapist in the world can¡¯t help if they don¡¯t know how to work with autistic children) If you can find someone who can do an ABLeS test, it tells you exactly where strengths lie and where the deficits are, to what degree. That made it much easier to design an overall program.
My oldest actually started speaking early, but my daughter is ten and has just started independently answering questions. For about three years she has been able to answer questions or ask them while following a script that we created, so this is a huge step.
She had been in speech therapy from age two, floortime and ABA since age four. She started school at age three, and attended full time from age five half day for kindergarden, the rest of the day for therapy. At home our entire environment subtly supports language development. We used PECS, sign language and at one point a DYNOVOX equipment on loan from the school. At the same time we required her to utter at least one word (please, more, fish, fries) All three of the former built up the idea of communication, the latter built up vocabulary and the expection of talking, and once she understood that we could request two words (more fish, more fries, crackers please) We moved up to three, four, five words. Up to eight to ten words (which is a normal sentence length). We would say ¡°I need five words¡± and hold up our hand, counting with our fingers ¡°I¡want¡more¡.goldfish¡.. It was so funny the first time she held up her own hand, looked at her fingers, and said ¡°Give me more goldfish¡.man¡± £¡
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