Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
>> Speech and language pathologists have a central
and important role to play in the improvement
of social communication in children
and in adults with autism.
There are many things that we do to improve social communication.
With our younger children, we use play, meaningful play,
and we lay language on top of the meaningful play.
The really important thing is developing meaning.
It may be nonverbal meaning and then move
to the use of verbal language.
The second thing we do
as children get a little bit older is have a visual schedule,
so that they can understand routine.
This is very important, for both children and adults,
that they really understand the routine of what we're going
to do in intervention, and then again, we invent language
on top of that routine.
With our older clients, we may use print to again,
develop communication, but again, it has to be meaningful,
so we may have different kinds of role-playing that we do
with them in terms of how we would use print; for example,
a menu at a restaurant.
That would be for our older kids.
So I think the underlying point that I'd like to make,
is that socialization underlies meaningful language
and communication, and therefore speech and language pathologists
who are highly trained in this area have a really critical role
to play.
We're not developing parrots; we're developing children
and adults and individuals
who have meaningful communication through language.