More Than Words: A Parents Guide to Building Interaction and Lanuage Skills for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder or Social Communication Difficulties

The book looks intimidatingly huge but it’s written in an illustrated, easily digestible format that makes reading 20+ pages at a time pass by in a blink. The examples of autistic behavior/communication they give in the book are extremely relatable, and that gives me a wonderful feeling that the author sees/understands both my child and me as his parent. (Which is priceless!) The information is presented in simple, clear language at a pace that never feels overwhelming. I am finding it very helpful so far. With this book I understand exactly what communication stage my child is in and how to help him advance to the next stage. I recommend buying a used copy if you can. Don’t delay like I did. I wish I bought it 1.5 years ago when my son was first diagnosed at 19 months. It would have saved me a lot of heartache and worry if I had this resource back then, simply by giving me a better sense of understanding and power over our situation.

It's amazing how much I as a person took the ease of speech for granted, until my son's early language regressed. And then, it was like watching someone who had a stroke who lost all speech trying to regain it. It is hands down one of his biggest deficits. This book was recommended to me by a speech therapist who was covering for his first speech therapist while she was on maternity leave.This book really dovetails well with DIR Floortime. But aside from that, it gives excellent explanations of the different types and stages of communicators, and provides strategies for how to increase communication with your child whatever stage they are at, and how to help get them moved towards the next stage.It covers a lot of communication strategies that you can try with your child. In the beginning, after our son lost speech, we tried sign, but his fine motor struggles were profound enough that frustrated him so much because he couldn't reproduce most of them. We next used the guidelines in this book as we introducing PECS (Picture Exchange Communication System), and that alone did amazing things for our son, because he then had a way to communicate to us for the things he wanted that he could do, and then eventually we were able to transition that to his speech device, and now we are using the techniques in this book to help encourage his emerging verbal skills.We've been giving him the choice lately, for example, of using his device or calling for "mama" when he wakes up needing to go potty in the night (it's one of the few full words he has back), because communication has been so hard for him, we want to let him choose which one he does...and he's starting to pick word approximations some now, though he doesn't have many of them yet, its super exciting. Just this morning he called out "mama" for me to help him on the potty, makes me want to cry just thinking about it. Totally am, actually. We love and highly recommend this book, I have found it invaluable in helping me to help give my son tools that work for him to communicate with us. It's an amazingly cool book.

I like this book. It really has good advices on how to deal with autism and how to work to improve maybe speed up the development of my kid. Lot of suggestions are very simple and some to be honest before reading this book I thought when thinking the same "what's the point of this it's not going to help". Glad I bought it.

I wish I could give every parent a copy of this book. I’m a speech language pathologist that primarily works in early intervention with toddlers. This book outlines the exact strategies that I give to parents in an easy to understand format. I read it and kept nodding along and saying “yes!” to so many of the examples. Please, if you have a child with any social impairment or speech delay, read this book. It does such a good job on focusing on how to encourage children to WANT to interact and communicate unlike some models that just reinforce a child to be trained with an extrinsic motivation. You will not regret getting this book— it has this SLP’s seal of approval!

It's so helpful, has examples/ scenarios which makes it easy to understand. It definitely gave us insight on how to communicate and to know how our daughter understands our speech. Definitely recommend.

This is the size of a textbook, but its not all words. Theres a lot of images and examples. Its super informative and a parent friendly read, meaning it's not all medical lingo. Recommended by the behavioral therapist that diagnosed my son with ASD. Highly recommend.

This book has been a great resource for my daughter with her autistic son (my grandson). Highly recommend if your child is non verbal.

Every thing positive with this deal!!!