This YouTube tutorial (Ming @ Agents of Speech) explains techniques for teaching non-verbal children to wait, use turn-taking, and learn imitation as steps toward verbal imitation. The speaker emphasizes establishing a simple 'open palm' waiting gesture and creating routines so the child waits for a caregiver's response rather than grabbing or crying; the ultimate goal is to elicit verbal imitation (sounds/words) from prior action imitation.
Chapters
So you're dealing with waiting already. Second of all is going to turn take, right? Because waiting is a part of turn taking. They have to wait for their turn and they have to ask for permission. When that happens, it means that they're waiting for your response instead of them trying to go out actively to grab that thing. When they give up that control, they think, okay, I can just wait for my mom or dad. You can start doing things in between when they're waiting, because then you're not wrestling with the kid. And your kid isn't like crying. And every time you're saying, cookie, cookie, cookie, and he's crying and you give in. We don't want that. We want to have a lower step, which is the open palm gesture. So once you establish the fact that your child is able to wait with an open palm when they want something, then you can create a routine around that. To teach imitation. Remember, the golden goal for nonverbal to become verbal is verbal imitation. Even if your child knows how to follow commands, the only way that you can do that is to get your child to start imitating sounds or words.
