The importance of teaching a child to enjoy "play" cannot be over emphasized. While it is certainly possible to teach a child to point to pictures, imitate actions and imitate words in artificial or contrived situations, it is less likely that the child will use these skills in a functional manner unless we teach him using the types of things that he is likely to encounter in the "real world" (generalization). In addition, if these "real world" items (toys, games, people) are not reinforcing to the child, we will only have an "EO" (establishing operation) for the child to talk when he's in this artificial environment (sitting at a table) with artificial stimuli (pictures) and artificial reinforcers (videos, candy, treats). Therefore, an ongoing "goal" in any program should be to pair established reinforcers (foods, touches, smells etc.) with new items to create more and more things the child enjoys (conditioned reinforcers).