Ming argues that verbal imitation is the foundation for working with non-verbal children. Without it, you can't tell if a child has a language problem or a speech disorder that needs different treatment.
The most important thing when you're dealing with a non verbal children from my perspective, when I'm teaching parents and I'm doing my therapy on my own is establishing verbal imitation. That's the most important thing for me. The reason why, I'll tell you why. Right. Is because if I don't do verbal imitation, I will not know whether this whole thing is only language related or is it speech related. So if I don't have verbal imitation down, I cannot go on. Or you cannot go down the rabbit hole of assessing whether this is. There's a speech disorder component to this and we have to address it.
