Educators

Speech, language, and communication are supposed to be inherit; therefore, many of us are not given the background knowledge we need to teach these skills. Speech-language pathologists may have the skills, but are not with children daily in order to teach communication skills. Whatever alternative system of communication the child is learning should be used for every communicative interaction, even when the child is the listener. In other words, the adult (and other children) should be using the alternative system of communication along with the child who is nonverbal. This modeling is the key to success.