There are 8 early stages of speech development in children: Eye contact, Spitting, Mouthing, Biting, Vocalizing, Imitating your sounds, Mama, dada, First word. All children, including those with autism, need to work through each of these milestones to develop natural speech.
In Part 1 we reviewed early stages of speech development. Part 2 is for individuals who have shown that can either put sounds together, say individual words, put words together, formulate sentences (whether echolalic or spontaneous)
This checklist was created to help you understand the first phases of speech development. Behaviors you see today may actually be signs of developing speech.
Stimming usually involves repetitive behaviors, motions or sounds. This article outlines research pointing at anxiety and sensory processing as root causes.