TalkAbility: People Skills for Verbal Children on the Autism Spectrum - A Guide for Parents by Fern Sussman

This is another tremendous resource from the Hanen Centre (http://www.hanen.org/) that focuses on helping verbal children affected by Autism, Asperger's, or other socially based communicative impairments to build more positive social relationships with people in their immediate environments. Like all of the Hanen publications, TalkAbility is filled with practical information and tips for parents and other adult caregivers, teachers, or therapists that can be used to support the development of more advanced language skills. This is a great upper extension program for children who have outgrown More Than Words but still need some support when it comes to accessing social and peer relationships. The TalkAbility guidebook is very user friendly and offers suggestions on how to help children develop better conversational skills, learn to be better story-tellers, become more adept at pretend play, and most importantly, learn how to make friends. There's also an excellent chapter that discusses how adults can become their child's "play coach" in order to help facilitate peer interactions.