Ming from Agents of Speech explains why flashcards backfire with autistic children: they lock kids into memorizing fixed phrases instead of learning flexible language. Play routines teach the same words in different contexts, so children actually use language to communicate.
For myself and the parents that I teach. I try not to use flashcards so early because if we use flashcards right away and we don't care about play routines and play skills, what's going to happen is basically what it means is that a flashcard doesn't change, right? So it's very easy to memorize the whole thing. If you see a picture of like let's say a boy kicking a ball, you can't change the face of that boy into a girl. You can't change the ball into a pineapple so to speak for that picture. It's always going to be that sentence and they start to memorize it and becomes frozen phrases, so to speak. Then you're teaching that behavior of oh, then all you got to do is just to memorize things and you don't have to interchange the language and you never get to a point where the child is able to use words differently. So play routines are very important.
