Shine Avi tip of the day!!Descriptive language labeling

Some children with Autism are able to learn to ask for (mand), identify (receptive) and label (tact) concrete objects and actions with relative ease but show a great deal more difficulty learning other parts of speech that may be considered more “abstract” in nature such as adjectives, adverbs, prepositions and pronouns. There are many theories as to why these “parts of speech” are more difficult for children with Autism to learn but I believe it is due to the fact that these words are “relational” or “relative”. In other words, the words used change depending on what is being compared, the perspective of the speaker or who is speaking to whom. For example, when seen next to a bush, a tree is considered, “bigger” but when compared to a skyscraper, the same tree would be considered, “smaller”. A ball laying, “on” the floor may also be “beside” a chair but depending on where the observer is located, “beside” might look very different! If I am talking to a female, I call her “you” but if I am telling someone else something about that same person, I call her “she”. It’s easy to see how the children can get confused! In behavioral terms, it is more difficult to obtain stimulus control when the stimulus is constantly changing!And I always say language is not always taught it is sometimes caught and for our children because of their deficits in social skills ,connecting to other people and also sometimes because of poor cognitive skills becomes very challenging.Here are some tips how you can start working on one step further then object labeling .So if your child can already label objects you can start working on descriptive language Here is what you will do You can present one of the above pictures and teach your child step by step how to describe the label in for sentences For egYou -what is this ?Showing the picture of kitchenChild -This is kitchen (prompt your child to talk in sentence)You- what do we do in kitchen ?Child – we cook in kitchen You -what do we cook in kitchen ?Child -we cook food in kitchen You -why do we eat food ??Child -to be strong .You-when do we eat food ?Child – we eat food when we are hungry And then you can just keep adding more questions after that .

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