“Let’s Get Talking” Strategy: Imitation!
What’s one simple, effective strategy that parents of an autistic toddler can use that’s easy to learn and can make a big impact? Imitation!
When a baby coos and starts to babble, parents naturally reinforce their children’s vocalizations by cooing and babbling right back to them. Those early sounds bring about other changes in the parent: their face lights up, they respond with cuddles, tickles, and lovingly look to their child while making similar cooing sounds. All of these behaviours act to reinforce the child’s vocalizations and make them more frequent. For most parents, imitating their toddler’s early speech sounds and adorable facial expressions is instinctive and natural, and if not, it’s easy to learn!
Imitation is a “responsive” language strategy, because the parent responds to the child’s early speech and language skills. We teach responsive language strategies in our “Let’s Get Talking” series such as increasing comments, reducing questions, repetition, and following your child’s lead.
The powerful nature of imitation is that it also naturally incorporates the other responsive language strategies: if you’re imitating your toddler’s speech, you’re also likely following your child’s lead, using repetition, and responding positively to your child’s communication attempts!
Imitation skills play a critical role in social, emotional, cognitive, and language development in babies and toddlers. Children constantly imitate their friends, siblings, and parents to learn new skills.
Research has highlighted that many children with autism have deficits with imitation, which can impact their language and learning skills, joint attention, and social communication skills.
In our “Let’s Get Talking” series, we use a Behaviour Skills Training approach (BST) that uses:
instructions: we explain WHY imitation is such an important skill
modeling: we model how to imitate, e.g., when a child says, “dadada” we will imitate, “yaa! there’s dada! hi dada!”
practice opportunities: we encourage the parent to try imitating their toddler or early communicator in play
feedback: we provide coaching and feedback
Want to learn how to use imitation to foster early communication skills? We’ve empowered many parents with these strategies and we’d love to work with you! Contact us about our “Let’s Get Talking” series for parents and early communicators.
