It’s Autism Awareness Month! We wanted to take advantage of this heightened awareness and advocacy, and use this time to spotlight ways that families and Speech-Language Pathologists (SLPs) join hands to ensure that all autistic children, teens, and adults have the tools needed to communicate in activities of daily living and/or educational activities.
Speech Therapy can address challenges or breakdowns that occur during speech, language, or social communication as these areas develop. Here is more information about speech therapy and the areas that it can support with communicative success for all autistic individuals.
Alternative Communication (AAC) Needs
Autistic children and adults may need support communicating wants/needs outside of using verbal speech. SLPs are able to identify the tool or tools that would best support independence in communication. Some examples of alternative communication include sign language, picture communication, or device communication. Better yet, AAC is an amazing tool that can help a child express themselves verbally! Pretty cool, huh? The ultimate goal is to ensure that all children/adults have a way to communicate as independently as possible.
Social Communication
Social communication is another area of communication that speech therapy targets. Social communication skills include conversational turn taking, maintaining the topic during conversation, asking related questions, and even non-verbal areas like body language. Social communication expectations become increasingly more complex as a child gets older. SLPs can help improve these skills through 1:1 therapy or social groups, for example.
Speech Sound Production
At times, autistic individuals have a delay in developing sounds in our sound system, as do many other children. Regardless of reason, delays in speech can decrease overall ability to be easily understood when communicating with caregivers, friends, or educators. In addition, delays in speech may negatively impact literacy skills in the future. Speech therapy can target sound production to ensure that each child can communicate what he or she needs effectively.
Language
Language is a board term that includes a child’s ability to express themselves BUT also the ability to understand what others say. SLPs can support autistic children with a variety of language skills such as following directions, answering questions, using new and complex sentences, and vocabulary. Language intervention can also be paired with alternative communication strategies we mentioned earlier to ensure that communication is effective and meaningful!
Cognitive-Communication
Cognitive-communication involves the areas of thinking that impact our ability to effectively communicate. Some examples include attending to conversation, organizing thoughts, memory and recall, and problem solving. As an autistic child gets older this is an area that speech therapy can support with to ensure academic success and success in postsecondary activities like postsecondary education or entering the workforce.
At Roswell Speech Therapy, we prioritize therapy that aligns with a child’s life and needs. There may be some areas where a child has differences BUT they aren’t life impacting nor educationally impacting. However, there may be areas that are increasingly frustrating for your loved one and we would love to join hands with you to increase independence and communicative success. If you’d like to schedule a free consultation and discuss this further, we offer free 20 minute consultations. Schedule here: https://www.roswellspeechtherapy-ga.com/contact
Comments