What Is Non-Verbal Autism? | Autism Video Lecture | Understanding and Treating Autism - Health & Fitness

parents are very concerned when their
child is not speaking and that's one of
the reasons why they come into the
pediatricians office or get referred to
a developmental specialist like myself
the differential diagnosis is often
initially work done by the primary
physician and one of the first concerns
is is my child not hearing and that's
why they're not speaking so that hearing
evaluation usually gets done and is fine
differential diagnosis or other possible
causes for that is something known as
mutism where children choose not to
speak to particular people they may have
speech delay but it's almost a selective
or elective mutism choosing not to speak
maybe in school or when other people are
out but only to a few members of their
family or friends and that needs to be
differentiated because a child with who
is nonverbal and in the autism spectrum
has a different diagnosis whether they
have just apraxia and they're not being
able to make sounds or whether they
truly do not have any verbal language
that is available for them has not been
developed they can be nonverbal
communication which can be worked with
and developed on these are the kids who
would benefit from early picture
exchange communication system much that
verbal therapy and verbal prompting
should be continued to help develop that
this is an area that a lot of people
even want to think of differentiating a
child who had speech and language and
then lost it and is this possibly Lando
clef no syndrome so doing a good
thorough history and differential
diagnosis is important when you have a
child who is not speaking it can be
associated with autism but also seen in
other conditions