It is very important to always respond to the child’s attempt to communicate.
Any time that the child makes an attempt to communicate (through any means), immediately acknowledge the child’s attempt. Accept all modes of communication of the child - gestures / pointing etc.
a. Acknowledge all form of communication attempts
No matter what mode your child uses to communicate, first acknowledge it. Whether it be by gestures / sign language or any other means. Acknowledge your child's non-verbal communication by modelling on Avaz what the child has just communicated. E.g. If the child points to chips, you can say "I see you are pointing at chips, I think you want chips". and model the highlighted words on Avaz.
b. Attributing meaning to the child’s response
Provide meaning to the child's attempt to communicate. No matter what your child selects on the device, RESPOND. Provide natural consequences to whatever your child says, even if it seems totally unrelated and seems like a mistake. This is called "attributing meaning" to the child's attempt to communicate. Do this even if we don't immediately understand the relevance of the response. Use communicative functions such as commenting, requesting or denying with it.
Click here to know about the strategies to use to respond to the child’s attempt to communicate: How to attribute meaning to the child’s response?
c. Using Expansions and Extensions
These are strategies that help repeat what the child says, but with added elements of language that offer the child more receptive language and helps them develop language skills. Click here to learn more:
How to use Expansions and Extensions to expand the child’s utterances
d. Recasting
This is a strategy used for responding to the child's utterance or attempt to communicate while also developing language at the same time by recasting the user’s utterance into a different type of statement. The modified statement can be declarative, imperative, question, exclamation etc. Click here to know more:
How to use Recasting in response to the user’s attempt to communicate?