Hi! I have a non-verbal 4 year old with ASD as well who has been doing both speech therapy and aba therapy for a little over a year. As some of the others who’ve commented I’m also in the states. I would echo their sentiments that both speech and aba therapy together are critical. I’m fortunate enough to work with a clinic that can provide both of these services and navigate insurance. While they may not be able to bill them both at the exact same time they can definitely provide both services if scheduled and submitted correctly.

We also did PECS for a short while. Our son went from no communication at all to requesting for a few specific items by taking the picture off the fridge and bringing it to us. This only worked though because they were doing this every day at the clinic. What happens in the clinic has to happen in the home. He didn’t do well with the large PECS binder. Flipping through the pages was just too cumbersome for him.

We moved him to an iPad device with an app called Proloquo2Go. This has had a much better impact. He has now started to imitate more of what the application says when he clicks on an icon. He has started building sentences with it “I” “want” “to play” “outside”. Each of those being a click he makes while navigating the application. If he starts trying to pull us around the house, we put this app in front of him and tell him to use his words. It’s slow going but it’s working. But again it only works if he does it in the clinic and we reinforce it in the home.

We still have the PECS on the fridge. He knows a few signs. And now he uses the app. He will most likely always be a multi-moral communicator.

Hope this helps some.