Ignore irrelevant speech, vocalizations, giggling, laughing, and actions. Check this scene out: All of a sudden, Andrew, a child with autism, breaks out in loud and animated giggling. The teacher spends the next 15 minutes asking Andrew what is so funny, she laughs with him, and goes around the room pointing out several objects and asking, "Is this what you are laughing at?" The giggling stops as abruptly as it started. The teacher is puzzled and has no idea what triggered the giggling. She was hoping for a breakthrough moment of connection with Andrew.

Rather than achieve a "breakthrough," the teacher has just reinforced an inappropriate behavior for 15 minutes! Remember, pay attention to behaviors you want to see repeated and ignore behaviors you want to stop. What's so inappropriate about giggling, you may ask? Nothing, if it is related to what is going on at the time. However, if you see no clear connection with what has just happened or is happening, then ignore it. You need to teach the child with autism what is relevant speech and actions and what is irrelevant. This goes for self-stimulating behaviors, echolalia, out-of-context words and phrases, screaming, odd actions, and any other behavior that is not related to what is going on.

One of the traps teachers and parents get into with children with autism is that we want to encourage all communication, because we so rarely get it from the child. However, make sure you differentially reinforce and respond to relevant and irrelevant communication. Otherwise, you will get more and more irrelevant speech and actions because the child sees that it gets your attention. When the child's response or actions are relevant, give lavish praise and point out the connection between what the child said (or did) and the relevant event (for example: "Yes, Andrew, it is funny when Barney giggles!").