Are yes/no questions a good way to start teaching someone to communicate?
Teaching children to use “yes” and “no” correctly is a lot more difficult than you may think. Yes and no have many different meanings. For example, a child may use yes to indicate that they want something, as in response to “Do you want this cookie?” But “yes” is also used to answer fact-based questions such as “Are you done?” Similarly, no could indicate that a child doesn’t want something offered to them, or a negative answer to a fact-based question. Sometimes an early goal in a language intervention program is for a child to indicate yes when presented something they like and no when they are presented something they don’t like. Children who have learned these responses are easily confused when faced with different situations. For example, if a parent was bouncing a child on her leg and the child began to fuss, the parent might ask, Do you want me to stop? The child is likely to indicate no if they have been taught to indicate “no” when presented with something they don’t want. A r
