Speech and Language Goals for children with Autism
If your child is on the autism spectrum, they may have difficulties with language development or a speech delay. In fact, more than half of young children with autism have speech delays or another issue concerning their language development. With the prevalence of speech difficulties among young children with autism, speech therapists should be targeting several key developmental areas when working with children who have autism.
Our blog explores the short term and long term speech and language goals for children with autism. For further information or personalized advice, contact our friendly and knowledgeable team at Little Fish today.
Goals for Kids with Autism
Typically, the speech and language goals can be divided into four categories:
Joint attention
Social reciprocity
Language and cognitive skills
Behavioral and emotional regulation
Each goal should have a measurable component, so that you and your child can look back at their progress over time.
These categories can be further broken up by differentiating short term goals from long term goals.
Speech and Language Goals
Speech and language goals should be created with the child’s age in mind. For example, a one year old child won’t be able to sit down for a 20 minute story time at the end of their marking period, whereas a three year old will likely meet that goal. However, it’s important to keep in mind that each child is different, and additional factors like other disabilities or cognitive issues can play a part in whether a specific three year old would be able to reach the goal in that scenario.
1. Joint Attention
Joint attention the ability your child has to coordinate the focus of their attention (e.g., an object) with you. Joint attention is a critical skill for early language development and should start developing between 6 and 12 months of age. Joint attention goals usually include:
Hearing a noise outside and looking at you while looking surprised
Looking back and forth between you and a preferred toy
Pointing to a plane in the sky and looking at you
Shifting gaze from one task to another, for example between the whiteboard and a book or your face and their favorite toy
Directing your attention to another person by looking at that person and then back to you
2. Social Reciprocity
Social reciprocity is the ‘give and take’ seesaw element of conversations and other conversational tasks. Children with autism often have difficulties knowing when to speak and when to listen, and may engage in one or the other too frequently. They may not know how to best respond to other peoples’ interests and responses, which can lead to social difficulties. Social reciprocity goals can include:
Taking turns
Initiating interactions
Expanding their comments to engage their conversational partner
Initiating and maintaining conversations that interest others while remaining sensitive to the social context
Recognizing breakdowns in communication and working to repair them
Maintaining a balance between making comments and requesting information during a conversation
3. Language and Related Cognitive Goals
Language and cognition goals relate to the child’s ability convey an idea with gestures, signs, words, or sentences. Related cognitive goals refers to nonverbal communication, such as gesturing. Goals that can be included in this category are:
Using gestures to indicate their intentions, for example giving, waving, and pointing
Adding vocalizations to gestures for additional context
Using functional words to express their wants and needs, such as, “help,” or “open.”
Understanding and using more creative and descriptive words
Naming actions and objects while looking at pictures
Understanding the sequence of events, for example in a book or the sequence of the letters in the alphabet
Expanding their average length of utterance 2 words per sentence to 5 words per sentence
Improving grammar
4. Behavioral and Emotional Regulation
Children who have autism often have problems regulating their emotions and behavior, and it is typically most difficult for younger children. Behavioral and emotional regulation is your child’s ability to understand the emotion they’re feeling, process it, feel it, and learn to cope with it.
Goals are emotional and behavioral regulation can include:
Expressing their emotional state
Understanding how others may be feeling
Using language to talk through transitions across activities
Protesting undesired activities
Self-monitoring by perceiving their actions during social events
Asking to participate in a soothing activity when stressed or overwhelmed
Negotiating and collaborating with others during interactions
The Main Goal
Overall, the main goal for children with autism is to communicate functionally within their environment. The aim is to help your child to communicate their wants and needs in a way that can be easily understood when socializing with others. With over 50 functional communication goals available for kids of all ages and abilities to work on, you can make them part of your everyday interactions so that your child may not even notice they’re learning a new skill!
Contact Little Fish Today for Your Child’s Speech and Language Goals
At Little Fish we’re a patient, understanding, and highly knowledgeable team who work with children of all ages and abilities. We have experience working with children with autism with speech delays and other language development issues, and aim to help them communicate effectively in a wide range of scenarios. To book an assessment for your child, contact our experienced team today.