The medical model has made all sorts of inaccurate assumptions about Autistic people. It decided that we couldn’t communicate the same way as non-autistic people do so therefore we must not be able to communicate. Autistic people communicate Autistically.
Because of this there have been decades of “therapies” based on this damaging assumption. But when Autistic children get together you can see how wonderfully they interact with each other. The same happens when Autistic adults meet each other.
Edinburgh University researched Autistic Communication in 2018 and found that Autistic peer to peer interaction is highly effective. This research was carried out by Dr. Catherine Crompton and Sue Fletcher Watson. I was honoured when Dr. Crompton kindly wrote the foreword for my social skills books. These books teach the duality of communication because it is a two-way thing after all!
Here’s what Neurophyschologist Catherine Crompton had to say:
“The “Konnect” series are the first activity books to help neurodiverse young people embrace and harness their individual ways of communicating. The activities allow children to find their own ways to express themselves, and learn more about themselves and others. They support children to develop the skills to communicate what they think and how they feel in diverse ways. They encourage children to build confidence and relationships in a way that works with them, using their diverse strengths. It’s so important to have materials created by neurodivergent members of the community, and AUsome has combined lived autistic experience with expertise in speech and drama to create truly unique and valuable resources. “
Find out more about these wonderful resources.
Why this matters for how we teach communication
This research is often called the “double empathy problem”: communication breaks down between Autistic and non-autistic people in both directions, not because Autistic people lack a skill. If that’s true, teaching Autistic children to communicate more like non-autistic people only solves half the problem, and puts all the work on the Autistic person.
A more effective approach teaches communication as a shared, two-way skill. That means helping Autistic children understand and use their own natural communication style with confidence, while also helping the people around them, parents, teachers, and peers, understand and adapt to that style. Both sides benefit when the goal is mutual understanding rather than one-directional compliance.
In practice, this can look like giving processing time before expecting a response, taking stimming and body language seriously as communication, and not assuming that a lack of eye contact or a flat tone means disinterest. Small shifts like these often do more to close the communication gap than years of traditional social skills training aimed only at the Autistic child.
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