No single method makes a vocabulary

Vocabulary selection is not a shopping trip and it is not a personality test. It is a set of ways of looking. A frequency list counts what speaking samples say. An environmental inventory walks the kitchen and the bus. Informants name the people and the loves. A functions check asks whether the board can refuse as well as request. Their own sample honours scripts, echolalia, and whatever already tries to come out. Phrases buy speed. Spelling buys anything nobody thought to program.

Used alone, each method fails in a specific way. Frequency gives grammar with no life. An inventory gives a labelled house. A family list becomes a sticker sheet of objects, thin on not and stop. Activity pages move stop to a new place every hour, so hands cannot learn a map. A request protocol — snack menus, PECS as the whole system — is a vending machine. Spelling without core asks someone to pay the highest cost of entry before they can say no.

The work is to stack. Frequency for the words that return. Functions as a test, not a word list. Informants and the person’s own sample for fringe. Phrases for the sentences that have to come out now — Kindred’s hold-up cards live here. Alphabet when it can come, never as a gate. Do not let an activity page evict the core map.

If they already have a robust system — Unity, PODD, a well-built grid — follow that map. Kindred is a backup and a way to see the holes. It is not a reason to start over.