DS refusal to talk...i don't understand

[mysonben]

He is 3y 8m ,has asd , a huge speech delay/disorder, but he was making such good progress since xmas. He has started again SALT 3 weeks ago, and lately when he asks for something or tries to talk to us if we don't understand him (that happens a lot as his speech is very bad) he just walk away or will not try to explain again instead he grunts ,makes silly noises with his mouth shut and refuses eye contact.
I don't understand why he started doing this but it sure is worrying me.
Do you think he might be fed up with his stuggle when talking or fed up with us not understanding what he says???
He also does it when we try to make him talk instead of grunting /screaming for something, he seems to be losing the interest to talk again.
What are we doing wrong? Could it be due to us pushing him too hard at home and at speech therapy ?
(he does fine there but is a bit anxious he fiddles with his hair and keeps his hands near his face/eyes a lot when he has to interact/talk)
Help ! Any words of wisdom? Thanks.

Also sometimes he will come up to us and try talking with his mouth shut, or whispers and refuses to do what we aks him like looking at us and repeating what he has just said so we can try to understand him. Then he walks away looking sad, or have a tantrum.

i found this hardest with my ds dont ask him to look at you but ask him to show you what he wants then verbalise it for him

i found when my ds wasn't confident with his speech he would walk off or cry with frustration and if i tried to make him look at me even worse i found asking him to show me helped he would take me and point to what he wanted and i would then say oh "name wants a biscuit" ok say thank you

we did this every day i verbalised everything i was doing so he could see words to all actions and within weeks his willingness to speak came back he had just lost confidence and was finding it so frustrating

but i also found when he stopped speaking again was when he was talking it all in and then when he was confident enough his speech came back better than before

but i did find getting him to look at me was hard so i wouldn't force that issue just yet just find another way for him to get his point across such as showing you or pictures

he will get there its so hard for them ds has come on leaps but i did find i had to relax with my expectations of him and what i wanted him to do as he wasn't ready and needed to find his confidence so just insist on please and thank you's get him to show you what he wants verbalise for him you can say can you say that and lots of praise at the attempt

dont worry you sound like your doing a good job he will get there maybe play some role play games where he has to copy what your saying but keep words to about 3 words ds loved this

Thanks bubblagirl. I sometime thimk he is overwhelmed with too much with regards to his speech /communication , he does salt, we reinforce this at home too , plus at nursery he has speech/social activities with 2 other kids twice a week and the senco has put in place an IEP for him to help with communication , speech, socialising , and they are working on 'maintaining eye contact' . Maybe i should ask them to drop the eye contact bit as he really is more anxious now when he talks , and brings his hand to his face a lot more than before.???

yes ds went through this took him a while before he could maintain eye contact but they will have to still encourage it as you can at home just don't force it maybe if you can find ways of helping him such as can you show me he may become more confident again

its just pure frustration once ds language came along eye contact was better frustrations were better i used to get a teddy picnic and id have one he would have one

id say to teddy teddy want tea ds does your teddy want to tea can you ask he used to just say tea and i d praise and we'd continue things like this helped him become more confident then id find other things teddy want ** can you ask your teddy

do you think you need to get them to back off a bit?

That's what I thought too, the signs of anxiety could be a good guide for you to know that the 'pressure' is too high. So backing off could let the anxiety drop right back. If that does happen than you would know there is a direct link between x pressure and y reaction in terms of what you describe.

Also, can you give yourselves times when you can say to your self, stuff all the speech teaching etc, let's have fun, so at least have some timeout from being responsible for him making progress.

Does anyone else using the same SALT have similar issues??

My 2 sons have asd, but no speech delay, so all I know about is the anxiety.

agree with the other posters about dropping the eye contact issue - I think it's counterproductive -as if making eye contact is an effort then it's too much to expect effort that when it's an effort to find the words. my experience with DS was similar to bubbla's - that eye contact improved as language improved anyway.