Hi there - I hear the terror in your post - this is all very scary. I have 2 ASD boys - both 11. One echos (foster son, never had therapy), the other one (my bio son) had early intervention - started talking at 5 - and won't shut up! :) You just never know - I read the article below - it's pretty good. I wish someone had shared this with me 7 years ago when I was asking the same questions you are. I am now working on my foster son and let me tell you it can be torture having someone echo you all day every day. I try to smile a lot - I touch his face to have him look at me and give him a better response - which he echos back to me. (ha ha ha)

Try PECs - try whatever you are comfortable with. Be patient with yourself and your child. I remember telling my boy how sorry I was not to be able to understand what he needed. He screamed all the time.

When I asked Nick - my bio son - if he remembers not being able to talk he said yes and it felt very confusing. <3 I bet it was horrible. I still cry thinking about those days when he had a blank look on his face - empty eyes. He is absolutely an animated but quirky kid now. I should post before and after pictures. He is very direct and doesn't get some social situations. He is shy and doesn't love crowds or anything too loud. He has straight As in school - no actual friends (but he doesn't know that) but he tries so hard.

Every child is different. It's going to be OK no matter what!

Many Nonverbal Children with Autism Overcome Severe Language Delays

http://www.autismspeaks.org/science/science-new...

Your son is very young and it will take time but it sounds to me that he does have intent to speak which is a great thing. He is trying!! I know how very difficult this is and I so relate. My son will be 5 in July and is basically nonverbal but some would also say he is preverbal.2 years ago he could of never sang his abc's or filled in words to a song or even attempted to say I want juice.,but he does now but again 99 percent is prompted. It can be heart breaking and have shed more tears than one should be allowed to. It seems like you are on the right path and consistency and repetition are key!!! Don't give up, but for some of our children it is a really long road before they speak, but not for all children. Keep the hope and pecs my help relieve some of his frustration. Good luck, patience is required. Hugs

He is still very young, don't give up hope just yet. My DD gained a ton of functional language between 3 and 4. While speech therapy and her ABA preschool definitely helped, those gains have been of the "slow and steady" kind. The biggest jumps we saw coincided with adding certain nutritional supplements. Specifically, we saw big gains literally within days of adding Behavior Balance DMG, acetyl-l-carnitine, and Coenzyme Q10. All of these are relatively inexpensive and available over-the-counter. We also saw a mild acceleration of the rate of improvement after starting the methyl B12 injections, but those do require a doctor's prescription. Many families find that taking 1000 mg. per day of DHA & EPA helps with speech (we give 2 Coromega packets per day) but I didn't notice any change when I upped DD's dosage. I figure it's good for her cardiovascular system if nothing else.

My son didn't start talking til he was 3. We used a lot of picture boards to communicate.he now talks normally.it just takes a lot of patience . Read all you can and use a lot of pictures and try to get him to communicate with you.

Functional language here! Age 7.
What we did : Aba with verbal behavior along with ASL. I learned sign to be able to converse with Deaf even, he watched while I learned , I signed and spoke, Also.l check for Seizure, his were so small that I didn’t see but his deaf babysitter picked it up, I used Rapid Prompting Method , we used Prompt Therapy, he watched a lot of unboxing videos ... he’s functional conversational at 7 and can say phrases with five to seven syllables. He wants to be a you tube personality and loves playing Roblox. It can be done . Goes to the park and plays and talks to others kids like a regular child.