In this episode, we take a deeper look at autistic communication as a full culture, not a problem to fix. I explain the difference between speech and communication, why autistic communication often feels “off” in a neurotypical world, and what research shows about how autistic people share information with each other. We explore echolalia, scripts, direct language, interest-based connection, and non-speaking communication — not as deficits, but as meaningful systems. This episode is for anyone supporting autistic or neurodivergent people who wants to stop correcting communication and start understanding it. You’ll leave with clarity, compassion, and the reassurance that your child — or the people you support — have been communicating all along.
If you’ve ever worried that your child “can’t communicate,” relies on scripts, repeats phrases, avoids eye contact, or doesn’t communicate the way the world expects — this episode will change how you see everything.
In Episode 3 of The Redefining Autism Podcast, we unpack autistic communication as a culture, not a deficit. This conversation goes beyond speech and vocabulary lists to explain how autistic and neurodivergent people communicate meaning through echolalia, scripts, direct language, shared interests, movement, and non-speaking systems.
Drawing on research and real-life examples, this episode explains why autistic people communicate just as effectively with each other as non-autistic people do — and why breakdowns happen most often when two different communication cultures collide.
Whether you’re a parent, caregiver, educator, or professional, you’ll walk away with relief, validation, and practical ways to build a shared language rooted in respect instead of correction.
(timestamps included)
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👉Crompton, C. J., Ropar, D., Evans-Williams, C. V., Flynn, E. G., & Fletcher-Watson, S. (2020). Autistic peer-to-peer information transfer is highly effective. Autism : the international journal of research and practice, 24(7), 1704–1712.
👉 https://doi.org/10.1177/1362361320919286
Research matters here because it helps bridge understanding across home, school, and professional spaces; giving us shared language to support autistic and neurodivergent people with more clarity, consistency, and respect. This research is included to support shared understanding; not to override lived experience, professional judgment, or the realities individuals, families, educators and professionals navigate every day.
If this episode helped you see communication differently, start with the Autistic Brain Compass. It brings together culture, sensory processing, and communication in one clear, shared framework.
And if you’re craving connection with others who support autistic and neurodivergent people across home, school, and professional spaces, come join us inside The Support Circle. This is a community built to support the supporters — together.
If this episode resonated, please follow, subscribe, and leave a review. It helps this podcast reach parents, educators, and professionals who are still searching for language, understanding, and belonging.
I’m Kate Panfile, and this is The Redefining Autism Podcast.
We’re not fixing communication here.
We’re learning how to listen.
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Kate Panfile (00:03)
your child isn't lacking communication. They're communicating in a language the world never taught you to speak. Autistic communication isn't broken, it's honest, it's precise, it's a culture with rules all its own. And when you stop trying to force neurotypical communication and start listening to the communication your child already uses, connection gets easier like that.
Hey there, my fellow supporter, this one's for you. Welcome back to the Redefining Autism Podcast. The touchstone for your soul, always a reminder that you are not alone. Where every episode will have you walking away stunned thinking, wait, how does she even know that? Today we're diving into communication, but not the narrow version that the world has taught us. Not speech, not vocabulary list, and not scripted social skills.
We are talking about autistic communication as a full culture with its own rules, own rhythms, own values, and own languages. By the end of this episode, you'll walk away knowing the difference between communication and speech, why scripts, echolalia, and monotone voices are not the problem, how autistic communication is often more honest, direct, and clearer than neurotypical communication,
and why your child's communication is not missing, it's misunderstood. And let's not forget, we're going to continue to talk about how to build a shared language based on who your child is, not who the world expects them to be. At the end of this episode, hopefully you will feel relief, validation, and connection.
All right, do I have a story for you? Actually, it's less of a story today and more of a finding that came out of research. And this, I'm going to read directly from it because it is from a study. So I do not want to get it wrong or misrepresent it. I will link it if you want to it in its entirety.
This came out in 2020 in May and here's what it says. Sharing information with other people relies on the ability to communicate well. Autism is defined clinically by deficits in social communication. It may therefore be expected that autistic people find it difficult to share information with other people. We wanted to find out whether this was the case and whether it was different when autistic people were sharing information with
other autistic people or with non-autistic people. We recruited nine groups each with eight people. In three of the groups, everyone was autistic. In three of the groups, everyone was non-autistic. And in three of the groups, they were mixed groups where half of the group was autistic and half of the group was non-autistic.
We told one person in each group a story and asked them to share it with another person and for that person to share it again and so on until everyone in the group had heard the story. Pause, this sounds a little bit like a game of telephone. Resume. We then looked at how many details of the story had been shared at each stage. We found, here it is.
Here's the takeaway, here's the important piece that's gonna anchor this whole episode. We found that autistic people share information with other autistic people as well as non-autistic people do with other non-autistic people. However, when there are mixed groups of autistic and non-autistic people, much less information is shared.
Participants were also asked how they felt they had got on with the other person in the interaction. The people in the mixed groups also experienced lower rapport with the person they were sharing the story with. This finding is important as it shows that autistic people have the skills to share information well with one another and experience good rapport and that there are selective problems
when autistic and non-autistic people are communicating. So too long, didn't read. Summary of that is that.
researchers played a game of telephone and when the game of telephone was autistic person to autistic person, it was as successful as it was when it was non-autistic person to non-autistic person. The only interactions and groups that did not have the same success was when it was a mix of autistic and non-autistic in either direction.
Also, when they asked people about how well they thought it went, or their, you know, their, not happiness, but like their satisfaction with the conversation or with the interaction, again, the only group that reported being less satisfied was the mixed non-autistic and autistic group. But both the autistic to autistic and non-autistic to a non-autistic,
they reported similar rapport levels, similar satisfaction levels. ⁓
This is huge. This is huge because for so long we have been, whether intentionally or unintentionally,
telling autistic individuals that their way of communicating is not good or not as good as neurotypical communication. And we see that in the use of social skills groups where we put autistic individuals, especially autistic children, lunch bunches, and we put them with other neurotypical children.
And we essentially taught them how to model communication and behavior off of those people or kids.
Kate Panfile (07:06)
Open House Week isn't a sales event, it's an invitation. I want to be fully transparent that I am inviting you to join the support circle, but only if after stepping aside of the community and experiencing it, you decide if it's right for you. This is really just me inviting you to hop in the car, hypothetically with me and some others who feel oddly familiar despite not knowing each other well yet. We're all on the same long winding road complete with a lot of detours, construction zones, and sometimes even bumper to bumper traffic.
We've got gas station snacks, a killer true crime podcast, no pun intended, and zero expectation that you have to have it all together. You can ride along for a bit, see how it feels, and fair warning, you may not want to get out.
Most people stay because it makes daily life feel more manageable and a lot less lonely. If walking into new spaces alone makes your nervous system spike, Open House Week was built with you in mind. You can join quietly, take it in, and participate only if and when you want. Come experience the culture of the support circle
without having to push yourself past your comfort zone. You show up where you are, take what you need, and leave with support you can use right away. Open House Week gives you everything members usually experience over a month condensed into one week without adding anything extra to your plate. It's designed to fit into real life without asking more of you than you
already give. This time of year asks so much of you financially, emotionally, and mentally. And while it can feel irresponsible to say yes to anything extra, especially right after the holidays, support isn't indulgent. This is non-negotiable when you are carrying as much as you are. This isn't about treating yourself. It's about having what you need to keep going. Doors open January 9th, but the wait list is already open, so come on in.
Grab your go-to snack, no judgment. Mine will be Sour Patch Kids and a Diet Coke. Get comfy and come hang out with us. The company's good and your seat's open whenever you are ready.
Kate Panfile (09:13)
let's back up a little bit and talk communication versus speech. We need to make sure we understand the basics that speech is sound. Communication is meaning. Autistic children often communicate in ways that bypass typical speech.
rely on scripts, lean into gesture, movement or positioning, use tone differently, rely on shared interests, and use direct language. So what you have to understand, again, this transcends verbal, nonverbal, non-speaking. All children communicate
even when they are not speaking.
So here are five core autistic communication styles. The first we're going to talk about is echolalia. So this can be immediate echolalia or delayed echolalia. And echolalia is a piece of what is a bigger topic and idea, which is gestalt language processing, or you can be a gestalt language processor.
This goes into information processing. I wanna go there, I love talking about it, but in an effort to not totally derail, we are going to stick a pin in it. Let me know if you wanna hear about it though, sooner rather than later. And we're gonna talk about echolalia, echolalia being not copying and not scripting. We're gonna talk about it as processing.
meaning making and accessing words on demand. But as a definition, echolalia is when a child will repeat something, something that they've heard from you, something that they've heard from say a TV show or a song. It is the repetition of those words. So what meaning are they making with echolalia?
Well, it could be regulation, affirmation, rehearsal practice, comfort, or retrieval of stored concepts. So I will give you a personal example of this. So my children had ⁓ a girl who watched them in the morning.
who was one of my students and is now married with her own child. So that makes me feel old, but anyway.
she helped us raise our kids. I mean, in reality, right? Like, she was a huge, huge part of their life.
when she stopped coming very like amicably, the kid's schedules changed, my work changed, all that good stuff, I noticed that every time my daughter would get sad, she would say,
I miss Barbara. And the first couple of times I was confused because I'm like, but you're sad about, you know, like not going to the movies or like something that happened at school. And she would hit us with, miss Barbara. Well, I miss Barbara was
basically a way of her saying she was sad. It was attached to a feeling. So when she felt that feeling, she would repeat those words.
The next we're gonna talk about is scripts, which kind of fits in with what the example I just gave you as well. Scripts are communication. So scripts are predictable, they're safe, they're accessible, they're expressive, and they're culturally consistent. when our child relies on a script, all right, this is something that becomes kind of like a go-to for them. They know exactly
what the effect or what the outcome will be when they rely on that script. And that is predictable. That is creating control in a world that for autistic individuals feels very unpredictable and very ever-changing. For many autistic individuals, scripts are a whole language.
The third communication style is directness. So autistic communication is often clear, literal, precise, honest. This is cultural, not rude. It's not defiance.
This is sometimes where it's hard because there's this gap in what neurotypical culture says communication should be and what autistic culture says communication should be. The fourth communication style is interest-based connection. So you may have been thinking to yourself,
back a couple minutes ago, well, if they're not in a lunch munch, if they're not in a social skills group, then like, where do they go? What do we do? Because there has to be a way for them to build connection and build relationship. And, you know, some would argue, learn how to do that. But again, the research that I just presented to you kind of says that we, there isn't a need for that. But what there is a need for is putting them around other individuals who
are like them. And it doesn't have to be like them in anything other than an interest. Because autistic culture connects through shared interests, deep dives, passionate topics. These are our special interests, our spins and mutual enthusiasm. If you get two autistic individuals who have a love for the same thing, watch them go. I mean, it is all over. This is authentic.
communication. And the fifth communication style is through non-speaking communication. Not non-verbal, not lacking. A full communication system that may rely on augmentative or alternative communication devices, gestures, typing, movement, pointing, eye gaze, or proximity.
Now, where do we go from here?
We have to start by breaking down the neurotypical communication assumptions. So what does neurotypical communication or culture value? Well, it values small talk and tone shifts and eye contact and vocal inflection and implicit meaning and social niceties. But autistic culture values accuracy and clarity and honesty, shared interests, predictability and direct.
meaning. This isn't a mismatch of skills. It's a mismatch of culture. So how do we build a shared language with our children, with your child? How do you do it? Well, it needs to be practical. It needs to be relational and it needs to be grounding. So we have to do the following. We have to validate scripts instead of shutting them down.
We have to join the interest instead of redirecting it. We have to respond to directness with
co-regulation and respect. We have to offer clear language instead of vague prompting. We have to use visuals to support communication. We have to slow down or stop talking when we hit that overwhelm or that sensory overload. And we have to build trust through consistency by doing these things again and again. Now this is going to lead
perfectly into episode four, which where we're going to talk about emotional processing and I'm so excited to do that. But before we do, let's recap what we learned today. Communication and speech are not the same. Your child is communicating often more clearly than you realized. Ecolalia scripts and directness are communication styles, not deficits. Autistic communication is honest,
precise and rooted in sensory and emotional truth. Misunderstanding happens when two cultures collide without a translator. You can build a shared language by honoring your child's communication, not correcting it. And connection grows when expectations shift. Now, if nothing else, remember this, your child isn't failing to communicate.
They're communicating in a language worth learning.
Kate Panfile (19:21)
If today's episode helped you feel a little more grounded, whether in the autistic community or within your own family's journey, go download my free resource, the Autistic Brain Compass. It's the guide that brings everything we've been talking about together in one place. And it's the perfect next step for you. You can grab it at KatePanfile.com forward slash ABC. And if you're craving a community rooted in respect, nuance, and real connection, come join us inside the support circle. If you happen to be listening live,
You might be able to jump into our upcoming open house week and get a full month's worth of support and experience packed into one week. Come hang out with us and see what it's all about. Find more information at KatePanfile.com forward slash open house. But if you're listening later, don't worry. We always have a seat saved for you. The support circle is where we support the supporters. This is a community built for the ones carrying so much for everyone else. It was created with all the supporters in mind.
holding separate spaces, but a shared mission for the exhausted parents, caregivers, and families, school-based educators, and dedicated private practitioners and professionals. This is for those who are looking for connection, support, and a circle of people who just get it. You can find more information at KatePanfile.com forward slash support circle. And as always, you can find all the details about this and more in the show notes.
Kate Panfile (20:43)
Thanks for spending this time with me on the redefining autism podcast. Remember support shouldn't be a luxury that feels out of reach. You deserve spaces that see you understand you and remind you that you are not alone. If this episode spoke to your heart, would you take a moment to follow, leave a review or share it with another parent who needs to hear that they too are not alone? That allows the growing community of supporters rewriting what support really looks like to connect.
and continue to build the very community that we are desperate for. Until next time, take a deep breath, give yourself grace, and remember, understanding your child's brain style changes everything, except for your child, which is exactly how it should be. I'm Kate Panfile, and this is the Redefining Autism Podcast.
Kate Panfile (21:28)
This podcast is shared in the spirit of education and community. My work is about supporting the supporters. It does not provide medical, diagnostic, or therapeutic recommendations, nor care. If you or your child are in crisis or need immediate support, please contact your local emergency services or a qualified healthcare provider. And please know you are not alone in this. Support is available, including trusted crisis lines and local community resources. Help exists and there are people and resources ready to support you.