Being a parent is hard. Every stage comes with its own set of challenges, whether it’s switching from two naps a day to one, transitioning your big kid into kindergarten, or coaching your teen through friendship troubles. As parents, we’re always searching for ways to support our kids and connect with them while giving them the space they need to learn and grow as people.
A crucial part of being able to effectively connect with our children is learning how they communicate and identifying their learning styles. Children with autism can find it more difficult to communicate and need additional support to build up confidence in their learning environment to reach their full potential. Here are nine of the best autism apps that can aid you as a parent and help your child thrive.
1. Autism 360
Autism 360 is a one-stop-shop autism-specific app that you can tailor to your child’s exact needs, supporting you both through every challenge, from understanding sensory needs and building emotional skills to potty training and learning social skills. The iOS and Android-supported app was developed to celebrate neurodiversity while helping autistic children ages two to 15 express their needs and build skills for life.
Within the app parents can find extensive support, including rapid assessments and on-demand chat with licensed therapists; live workshops and downloadable resources such as reward charts, interactive how-to guides, and worksheets; evidence-based strategy videos; and a parent-to-parent support network with more than 10,000 members.
Sign up now for an Autism 360 annual subscription and receive a free one-to-one therapist session.
2. Avaz AAC
If you’re looking for ways to support your child with complex communication needs, the Avaz AAC app can help them express themselves and learn, building their confidence along the way. The picture- and text-based app uses three different levels of adaptive vocabulary that can be personalized to the communicator.
Beyond being a communication tool, Avaz AAC also helps develop and grow communication strategies with mini games, conversation starters, and uses analytics to help you measure your child’s progress.
3. Proloquo2Go
Proloquo2Go is an iOS-supported augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) app that can be used as a daily communication tool and a way to build language skills. Your child can express themselves using the symbol-based communication board, which is fully customizable and designed for a range of fine motor and visual skills.
The text-to-speech uses real recorded speech and lets you choose from 100 voices, ranging from friendly adult voices to genuine children’s voices. And beyond just communicating, Proloquo2Go uses its Progressive Language feature to gradually reveal vocabulary words, helping your child develop.
4. Kloog Social Skills
The Shine Centre for Autism developed the award-winning Kloog Social Skills app to help improve the lives of children, teens, and young adults who need more confidence and comfort in social situations. Users must help Kloog, an alien who has crash-landed on Earth, understand social rules and make his way through interactions with humans to get what he needs to fly his ship back home.
Through fun and meaningful gameplay, users are confronted with the nuances in communication and social interaction by introducing the concepts of context sensitivity, social consequences, and emotional recognition.
5. MIOGYM
If your toddler or child needs help with their speech development, the MIOGYM app transforms speech therapy exercises and training into exciting and visually engaging games. This autism-friendly app contains 100 levels of progressive games developed in consultation with speech therapists to help improve the speech skills of children with communication difficulties.
6. Speech Blubs
Speech Blubs is a language-therapy autism-friendly app that helps kids boost their speaking abilities through fun and engaging educational games. By using kids as teachers in the app, your child is motivated to copy and repeat after them, learning numbers, colors, shapes, animals, and more.
Speech Blubs also includes a Parents’ Academy, with bite-sized video tips that will help you support your child’s speech journey.
7. SpeakEasy
The SpeakEasy home speech therapy app uses evidence-based language techniques and at-home activities to boost your child’s language development. You’ll have access to customized daily activities tailored to your child’s current language level so that you can support them from preverbal to first words to more advanced speech.
8. Goally Therapy Suite
The Goally Therapy Suite is a collection of apps that come on a dedicated tablet designed to support kids and teens with disabilities with their daily activities. The Goally tablet has no social media or web browsers, providing a distraction-free environment of apps for your child to rehearse real-world skills.
Every aspect is parent-controlled from an app on your phone, so you can decide which apps your child has access to and which skills they work on.
9. Otsimo Special Education
Otsimo was founded by Zafer Elcik when he was looking for ways to help support his autistic brother in learning new skills. Otsimo offers a speech therapy app featuring fun activities designed to build speech and language skills using scientifically proven peer modeling plus voice and speech recognition.
The Otsimo Special Education app uses games to provide accessible learning opportunities and to help children with disabilities reach their full potential.
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