Autistic boy can only really speak when gaming

[AimlessUK]

I'm teaching a diagnosed ASD boy to speak English. He's not diagnosed ADHD, but I feel this is the greater problem for him.

He's played games for years. His parents think it hasn't done him much good.

I see it like self medicating in a way. When he's gaming, his dopamine raises enough to actually engage his memory.

However, we think he's even more reality de-associated and introspective as a result.

When he first came to my lessons, we played some word games, and that worked great, so long as there was a lot of pressure and excitement. But I've ran out of sentence games now and they're wearing thin.

I've started to move onto ways of putting speaking between him and ordinary games, but as you can imagine, this can be incredibly frustrating at times. No matter how good I get, I just can't be as consistent as a game.

What I think he needs, is not so much communication help, but dopamine support. In research, I found that WimHof and COLD SHOWERS would help, but being mildly ASD and ADHD myself, I know that cold showers are even more brutal than ice baths. The thing is, I'm an English teacher. While I'm pretty close with the parents, it's not really my place to suggest blasting him with a ice hose every morning to improve his grades!

So, back to gaming.

Do you have any recommendations for ways to game together, but keep it social and outward-looking?