When my son enrolled in our local elementary school, we gave him 3X5 cards fastened to a keychain, with simple pictures and phrases like "Let's play tag" or "Let's climb on the jungle gym" or "Let's play catch."
Older students were assigned to respond to the cards, and they worked very well the first few recess times. We were delighted until he stopped using them.
When I talked to his 'helper' students, they told me that at first it was fun using the cards with him but all he wanted to do was play tag, and they did not want to play tag all the time. When the card he wanted to use stopped working, he stopped using all of them.
When he used a communication device that recorded spoken phrases into the various pushbuttons, something that he wanted in one corner was a knock knock joke. He also wanted remarks recorded that caused some of his classmates to be taken to the office, but the school staff did not allow that to be added. He liked this device because his mainstream classmates would volunteer to record messages about their school day for him to 'tell' me at home.
My friends' children and most of the neighbor kids loved learning sign language and other ways to 'secretly' communicate with my son. I discovered that his mainstream kindergarten classmates could often "read his mind" and interpret words and sounds he did make into whole conversations.
He did not pick up everything his classmates modelled. If he interrupted at story time, his remarks were always about something in the story, whereas his mainstream classmates would interrupt with something totally unrelated. He never did advance to that type of interruption, but it was wonderful to hear them explain to the teacher what he was saying, and see the smile on his face when she replied appropriately.
In first grade one of his classmates told me after I had given my beginning of the year introduction, "He tells me things he'll never tell you!"
And in second grade the same boy said, "Patrick and I are going to be Marine Biologists when we grow up, and we are taking *him* with us!"
Supporting communication among classmates and peers and helping estabish friendship does not have to be a high tech, intensive undertaking. Sometimes the friends we make are just the people who we happen to sit next to and who share our ordinary experiences. Our children can learn from one another if we provide simple tools and opportunities for them to grow up with expectations of belonging, and remember how we established relationships when we were young. It may not have much to do with verbal communication at all.
Browse at your local bookstore, public library, or online bookseller like Amazon.com for books on encouraging and enhancing communication like:
Communicating Partners: 30 Years of Building Responsive Relationships with Late-Talking Children including Autism, Asperger's Syndrome (ASD), Down Syndrome, and Typical Development
Assistive Technology - Family Village
http://www.familyvillage.wisc.edu/education/at.html
