Ming discusses what gestures, vocalizations, and play patterns can tell you about whether a nonverbal autistic child might develop speech. These early behaviors are stronger predictors of language development than diagnosis alone.
If these things predict that children will speak more, then we do things that will promote the things that will help them get better results. Right? So we know that using gestures and using vocalizations, meaning those things as a combination, will help children get better results down the road. Right? So therefore, if we promote these things, it will help them speak better. So how do we do it? Basically, these gestures and vocalizations, they have meaning, and meaning comes from play. So play is something that we always need to look into because it's also a predictor of cognitive ability of a child. If you want your child to be smarter, quote, unquote, you should teach them how to play more.
