While using prompts, or waiting for the child's response, it is most important to be patient and WAIT for the child's response, rather than try prompting them with various cues. It is very natural to be impatient and try to provide different prompts to the child, in order to elicit a quick response. We need to bear in mind, that the child requires time to process the question and create a response in their head, and produce the response in the expected way on the device. The wait time can vary from 5-15 secs for the user to produce the expected response.
If you don’t use enough wait time, you may be denying opportunities for the child to respond. Besides, if you are rushing through prompts, you may be providing more prompts than needed.
Make the pause meaningful
E.g. When the child comes to you for chips, hand over the AAC device and have an anticipatory look to indicate that you are expecting a response. You can show the anticipation by first looking at the user, and then looking at the device with raised eyebrows, tilted head, a shrug of the shoulders and then looking back at the user, waiting for a response.
If the user doesn’t respond, try various prompts in sequence, as specified in the Prompting hierarchy - refer to Prompting Strategies.
Related articles:
How to give prompts - Prompting Strategies