For littleWords, the goal is not to turn parents into therapists. The goal is to make everyday moments easier to join, easier to repeat, and easier for a child to use in their own way.
Last fall, a friend of mine sat in the parking lot of a pediatric developmental clinic in suburban Minneapolis for twenty minutes before the appointment, scrolling through her phone. She had forty-seven tabs open. Forty-seven. She’d been up since 4 a.m. reading about echolalia, gestalt language processing, the difference between a 504 and an IEP, and whether her son’s habit of lining up toy dinosaurs by color was a “red flag” or just, you know, a thing three-year-olds do. By the time she walked through the door, she was more overwhelmed than her kid was.
I’ve been there. Most parents reading this have been there or are about to be. And the boring truth about speech evaluation day is that it doesn’t require forty-seven tabs. It requires three good ones, some snacks, a quiet activity for the waiting room, and the discipline to not coach your child during the assessment.
That last part is harder than it sounds.
Why You Shouldn’t Coach (and What to Bring Instead)
The urge to prompt your kid during an evaluation is enormous. “Tell her the colors, buddy.” “Show her how you say ‘more.'” “He does this at home, I swear.” Every parent feels it. But the evaluator needs to see what your child does spontaneously, not what they can produce under pressure from the person they most want to please.
Your job in that room is to be a calm presence, not a director. If the SLP asks you to interact naturally, do that. If she asks you to sit back, sit back. The evaluation is a snapshot, and yes, snapshots miss things. That’s okay. You’ll have chances to fill in the gaps.
What actually helps: bring a one-page document about your child. Not a novel. One page. Name, age, words they use, words they understand, things they love, things that upset them, anything the evaluator should know about sensory preferences. Hand it over at the start. It saves ten minutes of intake questioning and lets the clinician spend more time with your kid.
Also bring a folder (on your phone is fine) with three short videos showing your child’s strengths and three showing your concerns. SLPs love video. It captures what a forty-five-minute office visit might not.
And bring snacks. Obviously.
The Three-Tab Rule
Here’s my strongest opinion in this piece: the number of resources you consume is inversely related to how useful any of them feel. Thirty open tabs produce anxiety. Three produce clarity.
The three I’d keep:
- CDC Milestone Tracker. Free. No login required. Gives you a developmental baseline without the emotional charge of a Google deep-dive.
- Your state’s Early Intervention contact (if your child is under three) or your school district’s evaluation team (if three or older). This is your action tab. Bookmark it and actually use it.
- One autistic-led source. The Autistic Self Advocacy Network (asan.org) is a solid starting point. Autistic adults writing about their own experiences offer a layer of understanding that clinical literature alone cannot.
That’s it. Close the rest. The relief of closing tabs is, honestly, its own kind of intervention.
ASHA’s parent-facing pages are also excellent (and free, no login), so if you want a fourth, that’s the one. But the point is curation, not accumulation. Kasari and Lord’s work on early autism intervention and the JASPER framework gets cited constantly in current clinical practice for good reason, but you don’t need to read the primary literature to be a good parent. You need to know it exists so you can ask informed questions when you sit across from a clinician.
What to Actually Do This Week
Pick two of these. Run them for three weeks. Then come back for two more.
- Bookmark the CDC Milestone Tracker.
- Save your state’s Early Intervention contact.
- Subscribe to one autistic-led newsletter or blog.
- Create that one-page “about my child” document.
- Build your video folder (three strengths, three concerns).
- Toss anything in your bookmarks older than five years that uses pure deficit language.
Two steps. Three weeks. That’s the whole assignment.
I know this feels too small. It’s not. Most parents who try to run all six in week one quit by week two. The biggest predictor of whether a home routine sticks isn’t which routine you pick. It’s whether you do something on the days you don’t feel like doing anything. Five minutes on a bad day still counts. Zero doesn’t.
Build in a low-effort fallback version. If the full routine is fifteen minutes of targeted play, the fallback is five minutes of narrating what your child is already doing. Something always beats nothing.
Patterns I See Over and Over
These aren’t failures. They’re just common loops that families get stuck in, and naming them tends to break them loose.
Bookmarking everything, reading nothing. The resource folder with 200 saved links you haven’t opened since March. Sound familiar? Delete it. Start fresh with three.
Skipping autistic voices entirely. If all your information comes from non-autistic clinicians and researchers, you’re missing an entire dimension. Autistic adults have been writing about their childhood experiences, their communication differences, and what actually helped them for years. Read them.
Treating one viral post as gospel. A TikTok with 2 million views is not a body of literature. Check credentials. Follow autistic adults alongside professionals. Use social media in small, deliberate doses.
Using only older medical-model resources. The language around autism has shifted significantly. If your primary reference still frames everything as disorder and deficit, it’s time to update.
If you recognize yourself in two or three of these, welcome to the club. The fix is almost never dramatic. Usually it’s a small reframing and one adjusted habit.
Finding an SLP When You Don’t Have One
If you’re drowning in resources and don’t yet have a speech-language pathologist in your corner, here are the fastest paths in:
A pediatrician referral gets you an insurance-covered evaluation. Your state’s Early Intervention program covers children under three (and is federally mandated, so it exists in every state). Your school district’s evaluation team handles children three and older. Telehealth speech therapy clinics often have shorter waitlists than brick-and-mortar practices.
Once you have an SLP, ask them for their top three resources. Then close the rest of the tabs. Curation is care, and a good clinician’s curation is worth more than your own at 1 a.m.
Where LittleWords Fits
I should be transparent here. I’m the dad of an autistic four-year-old daughter. I sat in the waiting room for our first developmental pediatrician appointment with a notes app full of questions and a stomach full of dread. Most of the articles I found in the months before that appointment either talked down to me, tried to sell me something, or used language about my daughter that didn’t match the kid I knew.
LittleWords exists because I needed a tool that respected my kid and respected the science, and I couldn’t find one. So we built one with a team of licensed SLPs.
A few specifics: LittleWords is currently in a waitlist phase, with iOS and Android launches planned for Spring 2026. Founding Family pricing is a one-time $49 for lifetime access. The app is COPPA-compliant (kid data is never sold, parental consent required, no advertising). It’s designed as a speech-practice companion to complement therapy, not replace it, and it is not a substitute for clinician-prescribed AAC.
We expect families to use one or two tools well rather than ten loosely. That’s the whole philosophy.
For the Parent Reading This at Midnight
Most of our waitlist sign-ups come in between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. That tells us everything about who’s reading.
If that’s you tonight: the evaluation you do this month is not a verdict. The decision you make this week is not permanent. Autistic children grow, change, and surprise their families across years and decades. The stakes of this single moment are lower than they feel right now.
Run the steady, small things. Sleep when you can. Your kid will be there in the morning. So will we.
And if someone sent you this article, thank them. Parent-to-parent recommendation is how the most useful resources travel through the autism-parent community. Pay it forward when you find something worth sharing.
See also: One Breach Away: How a Single Risk Can Unravel Your Entire Business (And How GRC Prevents It).
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What are the three best free resources? A: CDC Milestone Tracker, ASHA parent pages, and Autistic Self Advocacy Network (asan.org).
Q: Is there a single book to start with? A: For neurodiversity-affirming parenting, Uniquely Human by Barry Prizant is widely recommended. For gestalt language processing, Marge Blanc’s Natural Language Acquisition on the Autism Spectrum.
Q: Should I join Facebook parent groups? A: Selectively. Choose autistic-led groups when possible. Mute the rest.
Q: Is there a list of neurodiversity-affirming SLPs? A: Several state and regional directories exist. Ask in local autistic-led groups for recommendations.
Q: What about TikTok and Instagram? A: Useful in small doses. Check credentials. Follow autistic adults alongside professionals.
Q: Is there a national hotline? A: 211 connects to local services. Your state’s Parent Training and Information Center is another major resource.
Q: Should I bring anything specific to a speech evaluation? A: Snacks, a quiet activity, a one-page “about my child” summary, and a folder of short videos showing strengths and concerns. Don’t coach your kid during the assessment.
Steady wins. Quiet wins count. Keep going.
