Making different noises for yes and no

[Laurajay84]

My DS is just about to turn three, has ASD and is non-verbal. Apart from leading us to things he wanted, he had very little non-verbal communication with us - obviously, something which contributed to him being diagnosed.

Previously if we asked him if he wanted something or asked a question he would just look blankly and not respond. Within the last week he has recently started answering yes or no to questions with two different sounds, an agreeing sound for yes and a funny little cough for no. Whilst he's doing this, he looks us right in the eye like he is finally connecting and communicating

Has anyone else experienced this with their child? We're really positive about this new development and hope that it's a pre-speech thing . Is there anything we can do to develop this further? Should we be responding to the noises or should we really be encouraging him to actually say yes and no?

Well done to your DS, Thats great. I have a just turned 4yo Ds2 who was non verbal at 3. He developed his own version of yes which was 'ah dee' in response to questions such as 'do you want a drink' or 'do you want cereal'. If he did want it, he would say ah Dee, if he didn't, he would scream. We were delighted actually! It meant that we knew what he wanted when whatever he wanted was out of reach.

We accepted it to start with, as we wanted him to continue. But gradually, as other letter sounds have come, we have said, when he says ah Dee, 'can you say yes'? And he does now say 'yuh'. He has also got 'no' down pat.

We just kept responding to any communication modelling the right words when suitable but early on ds didn't like to hear too much speech it made him scream so it just depended. Also we figured him not getting demoralised or shutting down about communication was more important than forming words.

Don't forget to take into consideration any bodily/noise communication too. Looking back on videos of Ds he was communicating via banging long before we noticed his communication via banging.

Just turning 3 was the moment we noticed ds understood more. He was playing on a slide before his final diagnosis appointment and we told him last time and he folded himself in half at the top of the slide and jammed his legs apart so he couldn't come down!

We had this in a similar way. I just went along with it to boost his confidence about being understood, but I also modelled the 'correct' language back to him so he was hearing the accurate word sounds.