Oral Motor Speech and Feeding Therapy

Speech therapy is almost always recommended for autistic children since many people with autism have difficulty with social communication. Even if a child is very verbal and says a lot of words, they might need to work on communication skills like: 

• responding to questions
• starting or ending conversation
• changing conversation topics
• using gestures like pointing
• understanding other people's body language 

Speech therapy is a big focus in early intervention for autistic children and is usually the starting place for recently diagnosed kids. There is a critical period in the brain for language development and so, it's really important to teach language and communication skills as early as possible, especially if there are any delays in that area. Your child will learn effective ways to communicate which will help them grow into more independent and confident individuals.

It might be obvious when a child struggles with speaking —they are very quiet, say only a few words, or don't speak at all.

Spot speech and language delays like a doctor here.

The goal of speech therapy is to help your child communicate effectively with other people across all environments. This may take the form of using gestures, simple signs, verbal speech, and Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC).

Some other common things speech therapists can help with:

• Nonverbal skills, such as signs or gestures
• Forming speech in a clearer way
• Communicating thoughts and feelings clearly
• Understanding and responding to questions
• Discerning facial expressions and their corresponding emotions
• Noticing and understanding body language
• Feeding and swallowing
• Stuttering

Your doctor may recommend feeding therapy to help your child with their negative feelings and behaviors towards food. Feeding therapy can be a part of your existing speech and language, behavior, or occupational therapy. For example, a speech and language pathologist (SLPs) can help with chewing and swallowing related issues and an occupational therapist (OT) can help with fine motor skills related to eating. Applied behavior analysis (ABA) is a type of behavior therapy that will aim to improve behaviors with mealtimes and increase dietary variety and decrease unwanted behaviors such as food refusal.