What helped with your preschooler with ASD ? Aged 2.5

[ToddlerMumma21]

Hi!
I’m really trying to best support my little one. 2.5 - difficulties with understanding, expressive skills, social skills.

She is undiagnosed and also ENT issues - so she may not have ASD I know. But I still don’t see any harm on working on these areas.

Her Interaction is coming along with us, she requests help with things by giving them to us, some hand leading. She points in books, sometimes looks back at me as I label the items. She’s got great play skills / role play etc. she’s also a little copy cat with actions and gestures. When she wants to : )
she doesn’t take much notice of other people or children and plays with toys pretty well too. Physically and cognitively her skills are on track.

Accessing private speech - not finding it overly helpful.

what did you do to help Little ones with Difficulties In these areas? Thank you - worried mum ☹️

[Scratchybaby]

My DS might have been a little different than yours at that age, but two things that I found super helpful:

1. A book called A Better Start for Your Child With Autism. This book focuses on play activities that can build joint attention, communication and help expand play. I'm not sure if this is helpful for your DD considering your description, but I found it hugely helpful in getting more involved in our DS's relatively rigid play at that age. Even if DS wasn't autistic, I wish I'd read this book when he was a baby because it's just great general parenting advice for supporting social and communication skills in babies and toddlers
2. Speech therapy resources for Gestalt Language Processors (you can find loads of them on Instagram as a starting point, but an easy intro is via the Meaningful Speech account). Whether or not your DD is autistic, or learns language in this way, again I found the advice and approaches really helpful in the way it makes you look at supporting communication differently. Rather than flogging flashcards and labelling things to encourage expressive language, it asks you to look closely at the language your child IS using, how they're using it, and build outwards from that with lots of acknowledgement, mirroring and narration. I've read that professional speech therapists get frustrated with how fashionable it has become to fling GLP labels at a child and that it's more complicated than what is presented to parents via social media, but if you're not having any luck so far, and you're not a professional SALT yourself, I found that the approaches were still a million miles more helpful for parents than the advice in the old Hanen books, and helped DS speed up his progress and build his vocabulary faster in a lot more meaningful way.

[ToddlerMumma21]

Thank you - we have the book you suggested and have just ordered the floor time. Interestingly we also have all the Hanen books and are doing a Hanen more than words course - finding it quite helpful but I can see some things are a bit dated!

I don’t know much about GLP. I just know she’s not saying enough to work out whether she is a GLP yet.

I’ve also watched a lot of Laura Mize - found it quite practical in most parts.

So, I do all this planning of activites and then most days find I don’t achieve half of it!

[ToddlerMumma21]

Wondered if anyone else had any advice?!