Ming from Agents of Speech explains why repeating commands backfires: kids learn to ignore early prompts and wait for the final one. Children who are minimally verbal may still be intelligent and resourceful, remembering passcodes and operating devices without being told.
To get your child to do what you want to do is very simple. Do not repeat your instructions that many times. Because if you repeat your many times, and let's say you say come over like seven times, and then they do come over the seventh time, what's going to happen? They're going to know, oh, so my mom or my dad's bottom line is that seven times, so I can ignore the first six, and then at the seventh, I'll come over and we're all human, even animals do it. They're trying to test bottom lines. They're trying to test, where is it that I can go, right? How many lates can I get until I get expelled from school, right? Children who are not speaking or who don't speak as much as their peers in terms of intelligence, there's probably nothing wrong with them, okay? They're probably pretty smart. They know how to open drawers, they know how to get around not being able to speak. They can turn on your iPad, they remember your passcode.
