Everybody's brains are different and certainly, the autistic brain connects in an unorthodox manner. Autism is not curable, but there are many language strategies the SLP can do to assist in organizing the brains of people with autism. It is my theory that people with autism do not cross hemispheres of the brain, from left to ...

Developing story grammar can have many great intentional side effects that would not occur if we are only focusing on the smaller (but important) things: vocabulary, morphemes, sentence structure. By aiming to develop story in our clinical work, we can establish an interesting context while still modeling and eliciting the microstructure of ...

Have you ever thought about how you, as an SLP, talk to people? That means all people-- but specifically, non-verbal children with autism. We have two forms of sentence structures: questions and statements. We bombard children with questions. We do not give children time to answer these questions. Many children will ...

  Our young clients with ASD aren't really so difficult when it comes to lesson plans for therapy and fulfilling benchmarks and outcomes. In fact, they're very easy. Look at my list of Top Five Necessities and you'll see that the first four are ''get it and you'll have it'' kind of things. 1.    ...

Why not get the school year started off with a special, personal note from YOU to the parents of your most challenging students.   Dear Parents,             As speech/language pathologist (SLP) at (name of school) Elementary School, I look forward to working with (child's first ...

With the immense popularity of mobile devices and apps, many developers are creating apps that are actually picture books! Some are GREAT, some are good, and some are neither. I see these new apps as falling into two categories: ''new'' books that have never been published and app versions of popular trade books. An additional, and in my ...

Children with autism don't usually like board games because they don't know how to take turns and they don't like rules. Board games also rely on interacting with people-now there's a threat to children with autism. However, when a board game is played alone, without rules, without interaction with other people, without taking turns, is it ...

I'm me. She's she. We're we and they're they.   That's all good, but most of the time children with ASD refer to themselves in the third person.   Here is my strategy for developing appropriate pronoun skills in children with ASD.   What is pronoun reversal? A pronoun reversal is a language ...

In last week's Autism Spectrum Blog, What's Silly about That?, I gave you several examples of presenting humor to different levels of people with ASD. Being silly yourself and finding silliness in life is so important. Humor is a language skill that is gleaned in people with typical development, but humor and laughter has to be taught to ...

When I teach people with ASD, one of the best indicators of how well they understand language is their ability to laugh appropriately, find a sense of humor in everyday situations, and to make jokes themselves. Humor is a level of understanding that people with ASD will need in social and business relationships throughout their lives. This ...