Anything I can do as a parent to encourage communication?
Hello! I hope this is allowed. My daughter is seven years old and autistic. She has been in speech therapy since she was three years, but we moved a few months ago and have since been stuck on waiting lists, so this is me reaching out in the hope for some advice.
My daughter's speech has been entirely "needs focused" so far. She can say mom, dad, and name some of her toys, her safe foods and some general objects of day to day life, and refers to anything she can't name by the colour of the object. She sings a lot and scripts, but she won't speak to people except to ask for things. (She can say yes but has never used the word "no" or any workaround.)
In the past few weeks, she has suddenly started to mention objects in her environment that aren't needs. The first time she did it, she pointed at the wall and said "a blue" The wall is indeed painted blue. It's been blue since we moved in here months ago. I had no idea how to react, so I just said something like "that's right." She's since been pointing at cars in the street saying their colour, or pointed at flowers on the way to the playground ("a flower"), and today, she brought me a picture she had coloured in, pointed at the rocket in it, and said "a rocket."
I'd obviously like to encourage this new kind of communication, but I'm unsure how to do that. When she brought me the picture, I said something about how she had coloured it very nicely, but I can't help feel like I shouldn't have. She didn't tell me the colour for once, she showed me the rocket. But if I just confirm "yes, that's a rocket" that doesn't feel right, either. She clearly already knows that. Likewise, if she points at a red car and says "red," do I just say "yes, a red car" or is there a better way to go about it? Are there any strategies I can use here? Sometimes I ask her questions like "do you like the red car?" but then I get no answer, so I'm just really unsure.
(We're in central Europe in case that's relevant.)