Autism & learning letter sounds

Question:

My son is 4 years old and is on the autism spectrum, “high functioning” although I don’t think that phrase is used often anymore. I am teaching him with the Montessori approach and sequence at home. It is very challenging to get him engaged in the material, but when I do it typically is with the math materials, which is wonderful! However, I have noticed he seems to shy away from anything to do with letters. His oral language skills are good, but still developing- he was a “late” talker.

What I’ve observed is that he doesn’t hear the parts of words. If by chance I do get him interested in “I spy”, he either doesn’t really understand the game or won’t answer correctly- and so I will quickly change to something else as to not make him feel discouraged (I learned that very early on)

Should I just completely forgo segmenting sounds right now? Maybe he is just not ready yet.

Do you think that it is possible that he may catch on eventually? Or do some children have to learn to read by memorizing words and not the phonetic sounds?

Julia says: