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 Note: This post was orginally published as a Guest Post on Joy's Autism Blog. Check out Child Talk readers for more informative articles as well http://www.talkingkids.org/

 Over the past thirteen years of working as a pediatric speech-language therapist, I’ve found that pictures can be a highly effective tool for working with children who have a diagnosis of autism. Children with autism are often highly visual and concrete learners; pictures have a way of slowing language down and making it more concrete. I use pictures in a wide variety of ways, but today I want to share with you how I use pictures to facilitate multi-word phrases with children who are just learning to use language creatively.

Most children with autism use echolalic speech. We think that this is because their brains process information as whole chunks—something we call being a gestalt learner. As a result, many of the children I work with have learned whole phrases that they use without actually understanding that each of the words in the phrase has individual meaning. For example, I’ll often see young children with autism say, “do you want to swing?” when they actually mean “I want to swing.” They do this because this is what they’ve heard asked of them when they were standing in front of a swing that they wanted to swing on. Not understanding that each word has specific individual meaning, they just repeat the whole phrase they heard in an attempt to communicate what they want.

One of my strongest beliefs as a speech-language therapist is that we need to teach children with autism that they can create meaning through putting words into a wide variety of short sentences. This is the generative aspect of language that makes it so that we can all create sentences we have never heard before, and it’s an essential aspect of language development. Without it, children are left to memorize sentences for specific situations and this highly limits their language skills.  When I work with children with autism, I make sure that they are using a wide variety of two-word phrases (see my list of early developing two word phrases here).

 As a speech-language therapist, I will ofen use pictures to show relationships between words in phrases so that children can actually see how changing words changes meaning.  Once they get this idea, the possibilities are endless! The actual pictures and words I use with a child vary depending on that child and his interests, but the general process I use goes a little something like this:

First, I find a situation where a child needs to create specific two-word phrases to communicate his specific wants. I look for a situation that is highly motivating for a child, one in which each specific phrase would be important to that child. Take, for example, a child who *loves* to play with a ball and hammer toy. His ball and hammer toy has a green ball, a red ball, a blue ball, and a yellow ball.  and he knows which ball he wants. Given this situation I would:

• Make a picture to represent “ball” as well as pictures to represent each of the colors.
• Place a Velcro strip on the front of a binder, and put Velcro on the back of all the pictures as well.
• Get out the ball and hammer toy and place it on the floor next to the pictures.
• Hold up the balls and allow the child to reach for one so I know which one he wants.
• Quick create the phrase on the Velcro strip that matches the ball he wants. Say, for example, he wants the green ball. I would put the picture for "green" and the picture for "ball" next to each other on the front of the binder, creating a small picture sentence ("green ball").
• Point to each picture as I say the word in the phrase (“green ball”).
• Have the child imitate me.
• Give him the green ball.
• Repeat the process, exchanging the color word on the velcro strip to represent the color ball the child wants.
• As quickly as I can, I back off of prompting him to create the sentences and let him create the sentences on his own.
• And, as quickly as I can, I get rid of the pictures and let him just use his verbal words.

The ball activity is just one of hundreds of activities where something like this would work. You might use this strategy to teach your child to create the phrase “eat + (food item)” or “watch + (movie)” or “play + (name of computer game)” or “go (location).” The key lies in finding an activity that allows you to teach your child that he need to mix and match words together to create his own sentences that have meaning to him. Once he understands the power of creative language, he’s well on his way to being an advanced communicator.

Nothing tops the feeling of receiving a gesture of thanks, kindness, or appreciation – except for sending a thoughtful gesture to someone so deserving.

Attention! Montessori teachers, Autism Specialists, Homeschoolers, Speech Pathologists, Social Workers, Parents, Grandparents, and Others: 

MrsRiley.com is a fun, creative, slick as a whistle website for designing picture cards. All for a monthly fee that’s less than the cost of your favorite coffeehouse espresso, latte, or cappuccino!

If you're a parent, teacher, or professional who’s working with visual supports, you know that creating a picture card with a custom image can be tedious.

That's why MrsRiley.com was created.

After experiencing the technical struggles and designing frustrations ourselves, we decided to wrap the entire process into a single website with these goals in mind:

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You'll have access to our ever expanding library of user-generated visual supports and you’ll love how easy it is to share your unique designs with others.

When you save your work, you can choose to make it public. Then each of the cards on the page becomes individually searchable. You can also choose to keep your cards private for sensitive materials. It’s up to you. Either way, it’s a breeze.

More about Mrs. Riley.com:

We launched our website in 2009 to help professionals, teachers, and parents design picture cards, collaboratively. Communication boards are intuitive and easy to navigate. Try our Page Builder for free, read heartwarming stories on our blog, and stay connected with us on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and Google Plus.

 In a blog post written on Today Moms, author and New York Collaborates for Autism Board Member Karen Siff Exkorn wrote a piece on 11 Things Never to Say to Parents of a Child with Autism (and 11 You Should). In the piece, Karen shares that she created this list of statements after brainstorming with several friends and clients who also have children on the autism spectrum.

An excerpt of the piece is below.  You can read the entire piece here.

1. Don’t say: “Is your child an artistic or musical genius? What special gifts does your child have?”

We’ve all seen “Rain Man” and know about the extraordinary artistic and musical gifts that some individuals on the autism spectrum possess. But the truth is that most on the spectrum do not have these gifts. In fact, only about 10 percent have savant qualities.

Do say: “How is your child doing?”

This is what you’d say to the parent of a typical child, right? It’s perfectly acceptable to say this to the parent of a child on the spectrum. They can share with you what’s going on in terms of their child’s treatment and/or educational experience.

2. Don’t say: “You’d never know by looking at her that she has autism! She looks so normal.”

While the speaker might view this as a compliment, most parents of a child on the spectrum would not take it as such. Additionally, in the world of autism, the world “normal” is usually replaced with “typical” or “neuro-typical.”

Do say: “Your daughter is adorable”

Or offer any other compliment that you would use with any typical child.

3. Don’t say: “God doesn’t give you what you can’t handle” or “Everything happens for the best.”

Please don’t use clichés. Unless you’re the parents of a child on the spectrum, you don’t really know just how much there is to handle. Statements like these seem to minimize a parent’s experience by implying that this situation is something that they should be able to handle. Also, while it’s tempting to try to put a positive spin on the diagnosis, most parents of newly diagnosed children don’t feel that the diagnosis is the “best.” Over time, parents come to a place of acceptance, and some even view the diagnosis as a gift or as a way to gain a different perspective on life. But don’t be the one to instruct them about coming to those terms.

Do say: “Is there anything I can do to help you out?” or“I’m here if you need to talk.”

You can offer practical solutions to help a parent handle the diagnosis or the ongoing tasks, like help with grocery shopping, babysitting or other daily responsibilities. Sometimes, parents just need to vent and it’s helpful to have a friend with whom to share their feelings.