Have you tried chew sticks? It help with oral motor .. Believe it or not, the mouth needs exercise too, and if the tongue is not being used in speech, it can become quite difficult to use verbal language. Oral stimulation .. We use it when we've been "off" verbal for some time. It helps alot

See if you can find a program in your area that uses Floortime - people skilled in it have amazing results! You can also look it up online and learn how to do it yourself - look under DIR/Floortime. The premise is simple and you can learn to do it. Also get the book The Special Needs Child by Stanley Greenspan - he's the one who "invented" Floortime.

There was a recent study that found many kids who were nonverbal at 4 had gained speech by age 8. Traditional therapies are certainly important, but the gains we have seen from those have been of the "slow and steady" kind. Whereas we have seen dramatic jumps within days of adding certain nutritional supplements. My recommendation is to read "Healing the New Childhood Epidemics" by Dr. Kenneth Bock and "The Autism Book" by Dr. Bob Sears and find yourself a good physician who treats ASD biomedically.

Some kids will learn to speak on their own and some won't. But most ASD kids will have much better results if you get intensive intervention. RDI and ABA are two different approaches that have had good results. RDI is cheaper and easier for families to implement. And it works on the core issues of Autism. ABA is more directive and motivates the child by using reinforcement to shape behavior.

I work with a child that has had success using PECs. When I first met him in Sept he couldn't say anything. Now he can say 3 word sentences with help.