Strides in Speech - Alamo

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

If you’re interested in understanding the non-verbal experience, we recommend watching The Reason I Jump. If you’re looking for a movie that can help your child understand their emotions, many neurodiverse families love Inside Out. Check out our autism-friendly movie guide here.

For both a scientific and personal look at autism, we recommend reading But You Don’t Look Autistic At All by Bianca Toeps. Check out our full book guide for more great reads.

Hero Elementary is great for the young ones. Songs for Littles is excellent for toddlers learning how to talk. And Ranking of Kings is a great option for anime and fantasy fans. See our full list of the best TV shows about autism and inclusion.

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.