Last week, I covered how to teach a pre-verbal child to imitate sounds on request as we build toward teaching them how to talk. Here, we’ll cover the motivational aspects of learning language and how to teach children to ask for things they want in increasingly complex ways. For some children, learning how to talk is a really high hurdle to get over on their own. Many of the traditional approaches to teaching children how to talk fall short. I share the whys and hows of teaching a child to mand, or request something they need.
The reason mand training is such an important part of early language development is that it is based on the simple concept of “I want, I do, I get”. This concept is powerful because a successful mand always leads to the acquisition of reinforcement. Anything that’s reliably reinforced will ultimately result in a higher frequency of the desired behavior. I discuss the three augmentative communication systems and how to choose which one to use. I also walk through each system’s pros and cons, how to choose which words to start with, the steps of teaching mands, and how to transition to words.
What’s Inside:
- The importance of manding in teaching verbal communication and language skills.
- Three main forms of augmentative communication and their pros and cons.
- How to choose which words to start teaching.
- How to transition from mands to words.
