Blog Details

• Mayuri Ramdasi
• 17 Jul, 2023

What is the Right time to start speech therapy?

Today, I am going to share one of my experiences and also answer one of the queries I have been receiving for a long time. It has been disappointing me for years. Despite the abundance of information on the Internet and in the world, I still feel there is a lack of knowledge and information among society and professionals.

Let me start with the experience:

A couple of years ago, parents came to me with their three-and-a-half-year-old child with autism, who had been diagnosed at the age of 18 months. The parents had received various recommendations. The first therapy they were exposed to was Occupational Therapy (OT). The parents complained that the child was not speaking or understanding what they were saying to him. However, the guidance given to them was, "Don't rush into speech therapy. First, explore the child and treat him with occupational therapy. He is very hyperactive and doesn't sit in one place. Therefore, proceed with occupational therapy and allow your child to settle down before starting speech therapy."

The parents proceeded with occupational therapy, but the child did not stabilize much; he was still very hyperactive. While certain milestones were achieved with occupational therapy, there was still no speech or understanding. They were told, "Your child is not sitting in one place. How will speech therapy work?"

I am stating with a lot of disappointment that this advice was given by the speech therapist himself/herself.

Here, the question arises, "When is the right time to start speech therapy in a child with autism?"

The parents had come to me when the child was three and a half years old, and they had started speech therapy when the child turned three years old, as they were told that it was the right time to begin speech therapy. They sought other opinions from different places, but they were not satisfied, and in the end, they came to me.

After listening to them, I simply told them that they had wasted the child's precious years. Not that the child will not progress with ARULA's approach, but we have wasted years of his speech development.

Now, let's discuss when the right time to start speech therapy is.

Firstly, we need to understand how speech develops in a child, irrespective of whether the child has autism or not.

Scientific proof shows that children start hearing when they are in the womb; their hearing sense organ is developed by the fourth or fifth month of gestation. So, whenever anyone talks, the child receives auditory stimuli and responds to them. Even after the child is born, it takes approximately one year to speak and come up with their first word. During that year, the child receives auditory information from their surroundings and develops listening skills on their own.

However, in autism, as the child grows older, their listening skills are hampered, which causes speech delay. It's simple: the more a child listens, the more they speak.

Having said that, I hope you have understood that speech therapy is nothing but the improvement of listening skills and training the child to listen. It is important to know how much your child is listening rather than just complaining that the child is not speaking.

Whenever a child is diagnosed with autism, before any other therapy, listening skill therapy should be given. Unfortunately, even speech therapists often lack this knowledge. Sometimes, these professionals may not have any idea of what to do with someone experiencing speech delay. They might show flashcards and ask the child to say words like "apple" or "ball" based on the images on the flashcards.

In my opinion, when a child is diagnosed with autism, I emphasize that speech therapy should begin. However, for that, a speech therapist should know how and what to work on.

In conclusion, I would like to say that if you have a child with autism, don't wait for speech therapy to begin after the child settles down, increase sitting tolerance, or improves attention span and eye contact. Don't wait for that. Instead, focus on developing their listening skills. The early years of a child are crucial for learning and communication. That's why we should prioritize working on speech development before other things.