A YouTube video ("Why Play Based Therapy Works for Autistic Children, Pt 1") by Ming @ Agents of Speech explaining how play-based therapy builds language functions in autistic children by creating predictable routines, then teaching gestures and vocalizations once the child understands the routine, and later shaping requests and more advanced communication.
So once you have those, you create more language functions for a child. You will increase the chance that your child will actually want to talk to you. And even if they have no words, maybe they'll do it in the form of gesture of which you can teach. Right? But you can only teach gesture if they understand the routine. If that's the case, the gestures and also the sounds, the vocalizations, those things can't be taught when they have a very, very solid routine understanding, then these are the things that we should train our children to do. Think about how to teach those language functions, create routines, and then teach some gestures and vocalizations. And then later on you can up it and request.
