Welcome back to Thriving with Autism. I’m Kathi Flynn and this is Wednesday’s Q&A. Today we are going to talk more about play skills and using play to help build language. One question I get all the time: What can I do at home with my nonverbal child to encourage him/her to talk?
One word: PLAY! You need to sit down with your child and play.

OK. Step 1: Find the things your child likes and play with that first. If your child is interested in music or songs, bring those into the play and make it super fun and interactive. My favorite is using farm animals with “Old McDonald.” The songs are repetitive and you can work on sounds that your child may be able to repeat, including sounds that objects or animals make.

Step 2: Work on imitation with an object. Imitation skills are very important with children with Autism. If your child begins to imitate your simple actions, he/she can learn to follow what you are doing and learn play skills at the same time. This is as simple as pushing a car on the table, stacking blocks, or even rolling a ball.

Step 3: Use a lot of language! Label everything that you are doing while playing. Pretend you are the narrator and narrate every part of the play. Label the actions and the objects. Make sounds.

Remember to get silly and playful and engaging so your child wants to sit with you and keep playing.

Use your child’s favorites but also try to sneak in some other toys that he/she may not pay attention to. This will possibly open up your child’s eyes and interests to new toys. Once you add in some actions and labels with non-preferred toys, you can go back to working with your child’s favorites again.

You should also give your child a break after several minutes of “play,” and let your child play in the way he/she prefers, even if it does not look typical. You can slowly work on making the play session longer and more involved. Let me know if you have any questions.

Tune in Saturday where I will give you another video. And think about Joining my Private Facebook Group where I share other strategies and engaging posts to a global community, represented by 18 countries so far! If you are interested, the link to join my group is:
www.facebook.com/groups/2656278424685736/

Until then, I’m Kathi Flynn and this is Thriving With Autism!