Useful guidance on aI speech therapy app has to respect neurodivergent kids and exhausted families at the same time. The right plan is gentle, repeatable, and clear about when an SLP should guide the next step.
Let me be clear at the top. This post is not arguing that you should skip an autism evaluation. If you are seeing signs in your toddler that make you wonder, get the evaluation. It is the right call. Evaluations are not labels you hand your child. They are information you hand yourself.
This post is about the in-between time. That window after you’ve noticed something, before the evaluation is scheduled, and during the long wait once it is. In Portland last spring, a mom named Rachel told me her son Eli was 22 months old when she first called her pediatrician. The waitlist for a developmental evaluation was 14 months. “I sat in my car after that phone call and just stared at the steering wheel,” she said. “Fourteen months. He’d be almost three. I kept thinking, what am I supposed to do until then?”
That window can last six months. Or a year. Or, in some areas, two years. You can do useful things during that window. Here are five.
Take the M-CHAT-R, but know what it actually tells you
The M-CHAT-R is a free, validated autism screening tool for toddlers ages 16 to 30 months. You can complete it on your phone in five minutes. It’s not a diagnosis. It’s a screen, which means it tells you whether there’s enough signal to warrant a full evaluation.
A positive M-CHAT-R does not mean your child is autistic. A negative one does not mean they’re not. It is a starting point.
Why bother doing it now, before the formal evaluation? Two reasons. First, it gives you a written record of your concerns at a specific date, which can help if you need to push for a faster eval through your insurance or pediatrician. Second, it gives you specific items to discuss. Walking in with “I’m worried about my son” is harder than walking in with “He scored 5 on the M-CHAT-R and these are the items he flagged on.”
Be honest when you score. Don’t try to make your child sound more or less concerning. The tool works when it’s used honestly.
Keep a “concern journal” for two weeks
Get a notebook. For two weeks, write down anything that makes you wonder about autism. Not just the dramatic moments. The small things too.
Examples from my own journal during our two-month evaluation wait:
- “Wouldn’t respond to his name at all during dinner. Three tries.”
- “Lined up his crackers by size before eating them. Took 8 minutes.”
- “Threw himself on the floor when I changed the song in the car. Took 15 minutes to recover.”
- “Stared at the ceiling fan for 20 minutes while I was making lunch.”
- “Said his entire ABCs at age 19 months, perfectly.”
- “Did not point to the dog when I asked ‘where’s the doggy?’ three times in a row, even though he loves dogs.”
A two-week record is a goldmine for the evaluator. They get more from 15 minutes of reading your notes than they would from 90 minutes of evaluating your kid in their office. The kid’s behavior in the office is sometimes representative and sometimes not. Your home observations fill the gap.
Bring the journal to the eval. Most evaluators are delighted when parents have done this.
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Start parent-coaching now, regardless of diagnosis
This is the move I most wish I had made earlier.
There are several free or low-cost parent-coaching frameworks that are useful for all toddlers, not just autistic ones. The skills you learn work for any kid. They work especially well for kids with communication differences, sensory differences, or developmental delays. And here’s the thing: you don’t need a diagnosis to begin.
Programs to look up:
The Hanen Centre’s “More Than Words” framework. Designed specifically for parents of autistic kids and late talkers. Their free articles cover the essentials. The paid courses are excellent if budget allows.
JASPER (Joint Attention, Symbolic Play, Engagement, and Regulation). A research-based intervention model. Even if you can’t access formal JASPER, the core principles (follow the kid’s lead, narrate their play, build joint attention slowly) are widely applicable.
ESDM (Early Start Denver Model). Another research-based model. Some pediatric clinics offer parent training in ESDM principles.
Aided Language Stimulation. Free principles for supporting any language-delayed child, whether or not they use AAC.
Starting these now means you arrive at the evaluation with a kid who’s had two months of high-quality interaction baseline. Think of it like physical therapy before surgery. You’re not doing it instead of the procedure. You’re giving yourself a head start so you hit the ground running after.
Build a low-pressure language environment at home
Speech delay overlaps with autism enough that almost every autistic toddler will benefit from a more supportive home language environment, whether or not they end up with a diagnosis. Start now.
The basics:
Stop quizzing. No “what’s this?” “What color?” “What sound does the cow make?” Quizzing puts pressure on the kid to perform, which suppresses spontaneous language. I know. It feels like you’re teaching them. You’re actually putting them on stage.
Narrate your actions. As you make breakfast, talk about it. “Open the bread. Spread the butter. Cut it in half.” Your kid is mapping words to actions even when they seem like they’re not listening.
Wait five seconds after you say something. Most parents talk too fast. Five seconds is a long time. Count it in your head. Give the kid space to respond. You will be surprised how often they do.
Model the words you want. Instead of asking the kid to say “more,” say “more” yourself when you give them more. Repetition without quizzing is how language gets in.
Reread the same books. Familiar books beat new books for language acquisition. Pick six favorites and read them daily.
None of this costs money. None of it requires a diagnosis. All of it helps any toddler, and most of it specifically helps autistic and language-delayed toddlers.
Try one low-pressure speech tool and watch what happens
The fifth thing (and this one is genuinely optional) is to try a low-pressure speech tool with your kid and observe how they respond.
Here’s why that matters. One of the most useful diagnostic clues for autism is how a kid responds to different kinds of social and quasi-social interaction. Some kids who avoid back-and-forth with humans will engage extensively with a calm, predictable tool. That information is itself useful, both for parenting and for the evaluation.
We tried an AI speech therapy app with our daughter about two months before her evaluation. The tool was designed for low-pressure conversational practice with an AI character. We weren’t trying to “test” her. We were just curious.
She loved it. She talked to the character (named Buddy) for ten minutes on her first try. She said more spontaneous words in that session than she’d said in any 10-minute window with us in the previous week. That went into our concern journal. It became a useful data point for the evaluator, who said, “That’s a classic pattern. Some kids find structured social interaction with a tool easier than with a person. That’s helpful to know for therapy planning.”
You don’t have to do this. If you do, pick a tool that’s designed for the population (autistic kids, speech-delayed kids), not a generic flashcard app. The tool should respect your kid’s pace, not pressure them.
What to avoid during the wait
A few things that will make the in-between time worse.
Don’t try every speech app on the App Store. Pick one. Use it consistently. Variety is not the goal.
Don’t go down internet rabbit holes at 2 a.m. The information online is contradictory, sometimes alarmist, sometimes outdated. Limit your reading to a few trusted sources. Save it for daylight. Your phone at midnight is not your friend.
Don’t compare your kid to other kids. This will make you crazy. It will make you crazy at the playground, at daycare drop-off, at Thanksgiving. Every kid is on their own timeline.
Don’t tell every relative. Hold the news with a small circle until you have a diagnosis and a plan. Loose talk now creates a lot of opinions you don’t need. Your aunt’s friend whose neighbor’s kid “grew out of it” is not a useful data point.
Don’t blame yourself or your partner. Autism is not caused by anything you did. The pediatricians of 1995 were wrong about this. You did not cause this.
The evaluation itself, briefly
Bring the concern journal.
Bring the M-CHAT-R results, if you have them.
Bring a snack and a quiet activity for your kid, plus a favorite toy.
Don’t coach your kid on how to behave. The eval is more useful if they’re themselves. I know the impulse. Resist it.
Trust the evaluator’s process. Some of what they do will seem random. There’s a reason for it.
Ask, at the end, what they observed. Not just the score. The observations. Those observations will matter more than any number on a report. They’re the raw material your therapy team will build from.
The bigger picture
The autism evaluation is not a test you can pass or fail. It is a flashlight you shine on a kid you already know and love, to see them more clearly. The flashlight tells you what supports they will benefit from. It doesn’t change who they are. It gives you a map.
Whatever the result, you will have a kid who needs the same things any kid needs: to be seen, to be loved, to be supported in the ways they actually need support. The five things above are useful regardless of the outcome. Use the waiting time well. You will look back on it as time well spent.
Rachel, the mom from Portland, told me that by the time Eli’s evaluation finally came at 36 months, she had a three-inch binder of observations, two parent-coaching courses under her belt, and a kid who had gained 40 new words through narration alone. “I couldn’t control the waitlist,” she said. “But I could control what happened while we waited.”
The kid is going to be okay. The family is going to be okay. The evaluation is just a tool. You are already on the right path because you’re paying attention.
