Some ideas to support your toddler’s social interaction and communication

Children with autism spectrum disorder likely do not experience as much natural reward when interacting socially with others. It is believed that some children have decreased internal reward from play and social experiences, which may lead to decreased internal motivation to engage or play with others. When children do not tune into their parents attempts to communicate, they miss opportunities to develop skills, such as sharing experiences and imitation. Increasing the frequency of highly pleasant play experiences you have with your child can increase your child’s internal motivation to play and engage with you over time, especially when they find these experiences rewarding. This is important as children will gain important learning opportunities when engagement is increased.

• Imitate your child’s actions, sounds and words and encourage your child to imitate yours
• When your child vocalizes, imitate your child and provide the word for whatever they are attending to
• Narrate what your child is doing or looking at, using simple one and two word phrases
• Use subtle sabotage to increase your interactions.  For example, put toys and snacks in difficult to open containers to encourage your child to communicate that they need help.
• As often as possible, interact with your child at eye level so that they can more easily make eye contact and respond to exaggerated facial expressions
• Use big actions and physical play to get and sustain your child’s attention (bouncing, clapping, running, etc.). Talk about this shared experience with excited-sounding action words.
• Increase sensory play, such as bubbles in the tub at bath time, songs like itsy-bitsy-spider, or games like peekaboo. Pause and look excitedly at your child, waiting for your child to respond and initiate or request the activity again. Avoid play where your child watches passively, enjoying your actions but not engaging in a back-and-forth manner.
• Withhold high interest toys and wait for your child to use sounds, gestures or eye contact to ask for them. Eventually expect eye contact and a word or gesture at the same time. Holding interesting items at eye level can sometimes be helpful.

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