Using a remote control car with late talkers and children with Childhood Apraxia of Speech

I have always loved using cars in speech for several reasons, however once I got the remote control car it was a game changer!  There are so many ways to use the remote control car to not only build vocabulary development, but also to elicit speech and language from those kids who have Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS), are late talkers, have expressive language delays or Autism.  I will also use it with my older students as a reinforcer to complete all their work because it’s such a fun toy.
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WHY IS IT SO GREAT AND HOW CAN I USE IT!?

1. Establish cause/effect: The remote control car is great for this!  It teaches the child that once you push the button, it will make the car start moving.
2. Eliciting Language: I place the car on the table and hold the remote control in my lap where they can’t see it, if they make a vocalization, then I press the button to make the car move.  With this it’s showing them the benefits of communication.  With my students with Apraxia my first goal is building trust in communication (saying something to get something), by showing them they can use their voice to get what they want, it reinforces their communication attempt hopefully resulting in increased vocalizations!  With late talkers it’s also useful, because you can start having them vocalize sounds or a certain target word, and the car won’t start going unless they make that noise/say a word.  You really can use this at any level including gesturing, signing, vocalizing vowels, verbalizing words, saying an entire sentence etc.!
3. Establishing Joint Attention:  Using the car is great to begin establishing joint attention with your child.  Since the car moves all around, it is highly interesting stimuli that automatically grabs the attention of a child. They can begin shifting their attention from you, to the car and back to you.
4. Work on early sounds or vocalizing/imitating various sounds.  Such as vroooom, eeeee for the screeching noise of a car, booom for a crash, woo-hoo when it’s going fast, uhhohh when it stops/falls/crashes, eee ooo eee ooo if you have a firetruck, choo-choo if you have a train.
5. Work on concepts and verbs such as go/stop, fast/slow, yes/no, forward/backward, on/off, smooth/bumpy, up/down, left/right.
6. Expanding utterances: Use verbal routines.  Such as “ready set goooo” or “one two three!”.  You can also use various carrier phrases. “Make car ____” go, stop, crash, fall, turn etc.
7. Requesting: Use communication temptation. Have the child request “again” “more” “I want car” “more car” “help me” etc.
8. Reinforcer:  Use it to motivate your student’s to finish their work and once they are all done they can use the remote control car.  While using the car you can still target multiple goals without the child even knowing that they are actually still working!

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