Teaching Child Communication Skills

I am a student working with a child with classic autism. This child is a seven year old male who is mostly nonverbal. His family and therapists are currently exploring whether PECS or ASL will be most functional for this child to develop language.

However, the mother expressed that he does use echolalia occasionally, and often times with communicative attempt. For example, he repeats the phrase “only at Walmart” when he wants to go to Walmart. What are some strategies I can share with this family  for expanding or shaping these behaviors into purposeful communication?

I have a student on the Spectrum who will not follow directions to come in from recess when it is over. During recess he is monitored by my classroom paraprofessional. He will run and say ‘no’ when it is time to come in while the other students and adults leave the playground, resulting in my paraprofessional being alone with him. There are instances when he has become aggressive, making this an unsafe situation. Although he is verbal, he typically communicates with short phrases; most often only to make requests. What may I do to prompt him to come inside without causing his behaviors to escalate, keeping in mind that I am not typically there to assist?

I have a 3^rd grader with Autism who is fully included. He is trying to gain attention from his peers by imitating their actions. His peers are becoming frustrated. How can we encourage him to interact better with his peers?

I have some students who continually get into arguments or fights. Many times I don’t know who did what. I don’t like to give consequences without having enough information and they of course blame each other. Do you have any suggestions?

My son is non-verbal. Recently he has begun screaming. This is not out of anger, but to hear his own voice. It is quite loud and can be very distracting at home to his siblings and out in public. I don’t want to discourage his trying to communicate, so I am not sure how to handle it.

I am a family member of a teenage girl with autism. She regularly walks around repeating the same phrases over and over again, much to the dismay of her peers and family members. Repeating it back to her or saying we heard her does not stop it. How do we reduce this? Is this a form of echolalia? Ex: Her cousin is coming to pick her up for an appointment. “I have an appointment at 10:00, my cousin is coming at 10:00 to pick me up, at 10:00 we are leaving for the appointment…” Help!

My son has issues with receptive language. When I tell him something, like this morning I was trying to tell him we would have cheerios for breakfast and eggs for lunch, all he could hear was he wasn’t getting cheerios right now. I kept repeating “we will have cheerios and then eggs after” but he still was not hearing me and continued to cry and scream. I then put him on the table at eye-level and validated him by saying “I will get you cheerios” but I couldn’t explain to him that we would have eggs after. My son will be 4 in May and this is probably the most frustrating thing we deal with on a daily basis…

I am a regular education science teacher that has a student with autism in my class. He communicates very little and will not participate in most class activities. I’m looking for some ideas of how to get him to participate more meaningfully in class routines.

I have a client with difficulty with turn taking. The child is four years old. What kind of intervention strategies or games could I play with the child in order to help him comprehend turn taking in both play and conversation?