She isn't entirely verbal as of yet. Mostly parrots back phrases and such. But those skills are improving. One of the works in progress. We are also working on teaching her to wait and do simple tasks via a reward system right now that the BHTs that are working with her started incorporating. I do know she seems to learn even if she is doing other stuff. If I pause her Paw Patrol and she is playing with toys and not even looking at the TV, she instantly notices it stopped. That and she has clearly learned several things from watching Dinosaur Train and such. So that checks out
Oh, also, another bit of advice: Special interests. They will inevitably be a thing, if they're not already. Unfortunately, there's really no way of predicting or steering what they will be. My experience with them is thus: to an autistic person, not a whole lot makes sense. We're surrounded by people who know things we don't, not just from more life experience but from an ability to intuit, interpret, and guess things that we just don't have. An autistic person gets a special interest when they find something that, on some very primal level, makes sense to a greater degree than anything else. At least, that's how it felt to me with superheroes. It can be anything, but generally it will be something that 1: has a consistent internal framework that is easy to understand and follow, and 2: is complex and detailed enough to be studied and analyzed for years before you run out of new things to learn. Superhero comics were that for me. Superheroes have a very clear sense of right and wrong, of what a person is obligated to do for others and what kind of behavior is unacceptable, and there are tens of thousands of them out there in media, all with their own rules and backstories to learn. It's a perfect balance of having a core ethos/framework that is straightforward while also being detailed and complex enough to keep you engaged for decades. It's why Star Wars and Star Trek are also appealing franchises to people on the spectrum, same logic. In this day and age, media and fandoms are common special interests, but its not universal, and even the most arbitrary and seemingly meaningless thing can become an autistic person's special interest. It just has to make sense to them and keep them engaged. Some people, like me, have the same special interest their whole lives. Others hop from special interest to special interest as they get everything there was to get out of them. We can seem very fickle like that sometimes.
Indulging a kid's special interest is honestly one of the best ways to encourage verbalization, it gives them an avenue for forming thoughts into words on a subject that excites them, and coming up with strategies for indulging it that don't involve spending money or very much money is a practical concern. Again, taking me as an example, my dad, who also loves comic books and honestly is probably also on the spectrum, would draw the origin stories of heroes for me from memory whenever I came across a superhero I wanted to learn about. I distinctly remember seeing a picture of Captain America for the first time, and my dad drawing a really crude three page comic containing all of the highlights from Cap's origin when I asked about him. It doesn't need to be professional quality, it just needs to be fun and engaging for your kid.
Granted, I was lucky there, my father and I share that special interest. If your kid's special interests don't align with your body of knowledge, research will be required.
You will also come up against situations where the kid's special interests conflict with practical concerns. You have no idea how many times I've put off homework to watch the DCAU. That can be very tricky to navigate, especially during the teenage years (also, heads up, autistic teens go through all of the same hormonal BS as neurotypical teens ON TOP of all of their autism issues, it's not fun for anyone involved). The best way to deal with it in situations like that is to empathize with how sucky the situation is while still emphasize its unavoidability, and find small ways to make it less sucky for them. Your kid will definitely still scream in your face at some point, but you should try not to take it personally.
Not much practical advice I can give in the abstract beyond that, but this is all important to keep in mind.
