The Autism Little Learners Podcast

Building a positive connection with autistic students is one of the most important things we can focus on at the beginning of a new school year. That's why I'm making connection the focus of Week 2 of our Back to School Foundations series.
There's something about that second week of school, too. The first few days are behind you, the excitement and whirlwind of getting everyone through the door has settled just a little, and you start realizing, I have a whole room full of children I'm still getting to know.
And that takes time.
For six weeks, I'm revisiting some of the most important conversations from the Autism Little Learners Podcast and bringing them back at the time of year when you may need them most. This week's conversation originally aired way back in August 2023, during the very first year of the podcast, so there's a pretty good chance you haven't heard this one before. And even if you have, I think it's worth coming back to as you get to know a new group of students.
Last week, we talked about what needs to be in place before we really begin teaching. This week, we're slowing down and looking more closely at connection. When a new student walks into your classroom, you might already have an IEP, evaluation reports, goals, and plenty of information about what you're supposed to teach. But none of that replaces getting to know the actual child in front of you.
In this episode, I'm sharing simple ways to foster a positive connection with your autistic students and why taking time to learn about their interests, preferences, communication, and cues isn't taking time away from teaching. It becomes part of the foundation for everything you'll do together.
Because connection isn't something we check off during the first week of school and move on from. It's something we continue building all year long.
In This Episode, You'll Learn
Why connection deserves our attention before we become too focused on goals and academics

Simple ways to begin building trust with a new autistic student

Why a child's interests can be an important doorway into connection

How following a child's lead helps us learn more about their communication and interaction

Why not every interaction needs to become a teaching opportunity

How noticing all forms of communication helps us better understand the child in front of us

Why respecting a child's communication, including "no," "stop," and "all done," matters

How taking time to build a relationship supports learning throughout the school year

Key Takeaways
Connection isn't separate from teaching. The time we spend getting to know a child gives us information that can make future learning more meaningful and accessible.

An IEP tells us about a student, but it doesn't replace knowing them. Notice what makes them smile, what they move toward, what they avoid, and how they communicate.

Interests can be a bridge to connection. Instead of always saving a favorite item or activity as a reward, we can join children in something they already enjoy.

Not every interaction needs an agenda. Sometimes we can simply play, imitate, notice, laugh, and enjoy being together without immediately turning the moment into a lesson.

Communication comes in many forms. Spoken words, AAC, gestures, facial expressions, body movements, sounds, scripts, reaching, moving toward something, and moving away can all communicate important information.

Honoring communication builds trust. When children learn that the adults around them notice and respond to what they're communicating, we're strengthening the relationship.

Connection takes time. It isn't a first-week-of-school activity. It's something we continue building and protecting throughout the year.

Try This
Choose one student you're still getting to know and spend some time simply observing what they enjoy.

Notice what they move toward when they have a choice and what they move away from.

Join them in something they already love without adding a demand or immediately turning it into a lesson.

Look for communication you may have previously missed, including gestures, movement, sounds, AAC, or actions.

At the end of the day, instead of only asking, "What did I teach today?" ask yourself, "What did I learn about this child today?"

Resources & Links
Back to School Foundations Series — This is Week 2 of our six-part series. Start with Episode #188 and follow along as we build from the foundations into connection, regulation, visual supports, transitions, and understanding behavior as communication.

Keep Learning — Read the companion blog post about building positive connections with autistic students. 

New to neurodiversity-affirming language? Read Why We Say "Autistic Child": A Simple Guide to Neurodiversity-Affirming Language. 

Next Week — We'll continue the Back to School Foundations series with regulation and what it can look like to support it in the classroom.

This is Week 1 of 6 in the Back to School Foundations replay series. While I'm in Portland helping my daughter move into her first house, I'm revisiting six episodes I think will help most as you head back to school. New season starts Tuesday, September 29th, with five weeks on AAC for AAC Awareness Month.
So much of what goes wrong in September is really about something that was never put in place in August. Three things. That's it. Here's what they are.
I'm starting this series at the very beginning, with the framework I built to answer the question I get more than any other: where do I even start?
The answer is not with the IEP goals. It's with regulate, connect, and routines. Those are the three things that have to be in place before teaching begins, and teach is the fourth pillar that everything else holds up. We all want to jump straight to teach. Sit at the table, trace the name, sort the colors. But a child who isn't regulated can't take in what you're offering, and a child who doesn't trust you yet has no reason to try.
The framework is fluid. You'll move back and forth between all four pillars every day, student by student. A child can be doing beautifully in a teaching activity and be dysregulated two minutes later, and at that point we set our agenda aside and go back to what we know helps that child. That's not a detour from the work. That is the work.
We'll talk about:
Why regulation has to come before expectation, and what interoception has to do with it
How to build connection with children you don't know yet, without going into teacher mode
How predictable routines lower anxiety and grow independence
The four pillars of the Autism Little Learners Framework: Regulate, Connect, Routines, Teach
In This Episode, You'll Learn:
Why a dysregulated child is not in a position to take in new learning
Why true self-regulation doesn't develop until well past early childhood, and what to do instead
What "teacher mode" sounds like, and why the questions get in the way
How to join a child's play without taking it over or directing it
Why speaking is not the only way to communicate, and what multimodal communication looks like
Key Takeaways:
Regulation before expectation. If a child isn't regulated, the lesson isn't landing.
Co-regulation is the starting point at the early childhood level, not self-regulation.
You have to reach the child before you can teach the child.
No significant learning takes place without a significant relationship.
Speaking is not the only way to communicate. Every child is already communicating.
Predictable routines reduce anxiety and build independence.
The framework is fluid. You'll move back and forth between all four pillars every single day.

Try This:
Send the Child Interest Survey home this week and use what comes back
Join one child in their favorite activity without asking a single question
Watch and copy what a child is doing instead of directing the play
Ask your OT for one sensory idea for one specific child
Teach a calming sequence with a visual cue before you need it
Look at one child's visual schedule and check the length and the symbol type against what that child actually understands
Pick one daily routine and make a visual sequence for it

Related Resources & Links:
❤️ Child Interest Survey (free)
❤️ Free Visual Support Starter Set
❤️ Autism Little Learners Membership
"Children learn best when they like their teacher and when they think their teacher likes them." Gordon Neufeld

div]:bg-bg-000/50 [&_pre>div]:border-0.5 [&_pre>div]:border-border-400 [&_.ignore-pre-bg>div]:bg-transparent [&_.standard-markdown_:is(p,blockquote,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6)]:pl-2 [&_.standard-markdown_:is(p,blockquote,ul,ol,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6)]:pr-8 [&_.progressive-markdown_:is(p,blockquote,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6)]:pl-2 [&_.progressive-markdown_:is(p,blockquote,ul,ol,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6)]:pr-8"> _*]:min-w-0 gap-3 [&_>_*:last-child]:mb-0 print:block print:[&_>_*_+_*]:mt-3 standard-markdown"> "Don't buy him letters." That's what a professional told Cari Ebert when her son Aaron was two. He was "obsessed," they said, and needed to be moved toward more appropriate play.
Cari ignored them. Those letters were how Aaron showed joy, and how she connected with him. Nearly two decades later, that same deep interest in letters, numbers, and dates is what landed him a job he loves.
That moment is the heart of today's episode, because it's exactly what happens when we treat autism as a journey instead of a tragedy.
This is Cari's keynote from this year's Preschool Autism Summit. She brings two lenses to it: 30+ years as a pediatric SLP, and 21 years as mom to her autistic son. Together they make a case that so much of what we were taught to fear, grieve, and "fix" was never the problem. The problem was the language, the linear milestones, and the compliance-first thinking we inherited.
Cari walks us through Aaron's whole story, from spelling words before he could speak, to teaching himself to tie his shoes at 20, to reading bedtime stories to his baby nephew. Along the way she gives us a clearer, kinder way to talk to families and a real shift in how we show up for autistic children.
We'll talk about:
why the child is exactly the same the day after a diagnosis, and it's the adults who need to shift
the power of first messages, and how "red flags" teach families to fear a diagnosis
deficit-based language versus affirming, neutral, strengths-based language
what autism is not, and what it actually is
the spiky, non-linear developmental profile
reframing the spectrum into a support-needs profile
honoring autistic joy as the doorway to connection and learning
Because we don't get to decide where an autistic child's journey ends. Our job is to keep believing there's more ahead.
In This Episode, You'll Learn
Why autism is a journey, not a tragedy, and what changes when we lead with curiosity instead of fear
How deficit-driven language sends the message that something is "wrong" with the child, and how to choose affirming or neutral language instead
Why autism is not a delay, a disease, or something a child outgrows
What a spiky developmental profile is, and why milestone charts don't fit autistic development
How to give families space to grieve their expectations, not the child in front of them
What presuming potential looks like in real life, including how video modeling helped Aaron learn a skill on his own timeline
Why deep interests, from Metallica to NASCAR, are the way in, not something to redirect
Key Takeaways
The diagnosis doesn't change the child; it changes how the adults see and support them
Regulation creates the conditions for learning, and connection comes before communication
All behavior has meaning; it's a clue, not a problem to extinguish
Progress isn't linear, and growth continues across the whole lifespan
Communication is a right, not something a child has to earn
Autistic children are different, not less
We stretch strengths instead of fixing deficits
Families are the experts on their child, and the most important members of the team
Try This
Take one traditional IEP goal and ask AI to rewrite it in neurodiversity-affirming language, without percentage-of-accuracy measures
Swap deficit words for neutral ones this week: "deep interests" instead of "obsessions," "prefers consistency" instead of "rigid"
Learn one child's deep interest, and use it as your starting point instead of redirecting it
Reframe a behavior you'd usually try to stop, and ask what it's communicating about the nervous system
Notice a child's glimmers, the small things that bring them micro-moments of joy, and make room for them
Start with connection before you ask for a single communication skill
Related Resources & Links
Cari Ebert's website - The Learning to Learn program, the Silly Sounds cards, and The SLP Talk Show podcast
Preschool Autism Summit 2026 - Grab the summit replay bundle, a free guide, and get on the waitlist for 2027
Autism Little Learners Membership
When we treat autism as a journey instead of a tragedy, we stop asking a child to prove they're worthy of our belief and start offering it from the very beginning. Cari's son didn't become worthy the day he got a job or gave a keynote. He was always worthy. Once you see every autistic child that way, it changes everything about how you teach.

The one who melts down at the smallest request, who seems to dig in the moment you say "do this."...you know this child.  In this episode I sit down with Casey Ehrlich, PhD — social scientist, founder of At Peace Parents, and a leader in the first peer-reviewed PDA research in the United States — to talk about PDA: what it is, why it's a nervous system response rather than defiance, and what actually helps.
PDA isn't defiance. It's a survival-level drive for autonomy — and once you see that, you respond to the child in front of you completely differently.
PDA most often stands for pathological demand avoidance, but many autistic people prefer pervasive (or persistent) drive for autonomy — because autonomy is right at the root of what activates the nervous system. Casey defines it as a survival drive for autonomy and equality that can override other survival instincts like eating, sleeping, toileting, and even safety.
We talk through what PDA actually looks like in young children, why behavior that reads as oppositional or manipulative is so often a nervous-system response, and the practical, compassionate shifts that help a dysregulated child feel safe again — in the classroom and at home.
We'll talk about:
●  what PDA stands for — and why many autistic people prefer "pervasive drive for autonomy"
●  why demand avoidance is a nervous system response, not manipulation or defiance
●  the five characteristics Casey looks for, including equalizing behavior
●  why we flip the order for PDA kids: nervous system and autonomy first
●  the difference between independence and autonomy
●  real strategies: signals of safety, declarative language, and rhythms over routines
In This Episode, You'll Learn
•  What PDA is, and why "pervasive or persistent drive for autonomy" may describe it better
•  How a survival drive for autonomy can override eating, sleeping, toileting, and safety
•  Why "equalizing behavior" can look oppositional but is actually a nervous-system response
•  How to read the early signals that a child is moving toward fight-or-flight
•  Why reducing spoken language and using declarative language lowers perceived demands
•  How to send signals of safety with your face, tone, and body — and why getting low matters
•  What the "four S's" — safe nervous system, screens, sensory/novelty, special interest — reveal about regulation
•  Why repair and felt safety, not teaching, are the moves in the hard moment
Key Takeaways
•  PDA is a nervous system response, not defiance or manipulation
•  Autonomy is at the root — a perceived loss of autonomy activates the survival brain
•  For PDA kids, think nervous system and autonomy first, then sensory, executive function, and communication
•  Independence is doing a task alone; autonomy is having a genuine say in what happens
•  Signals of safety often matter more than words
•  Declarative language lowers the demand a child perceives
•  Think rhythms, not rigid routines — even a chosen routine can start to feel like lost autonomy
•  Compassion over compliance — always
Try This
•  Pause and ask whether a behavior might be a nervous-system response to a perceived demand
•  Lower the demand: swap questions and directions for declarative, observational statements
•  Get low to the child's level and soften your face, tone, and pace
•  Offer real autonomy — a genuine say, not just a choice between two adult-chosen options
•  Reduce spoken language during escalation and wait for the child to re-engage
•  Build in rhythms instead of rigid routines
•  In the hard moment, focus on repair and felt safety, not on teaching the lesson
Related Resources & Links
💚 Casey Ehrlich — At Peace Parents (free PDA masterclass)
💚 At Peace Parents Podcast
💚 The Declarative Language Handbook by Linda K. Murphy
💚 Free Visual Support Starter Set
💚 Autism Little Learners Membership
When we stop asking "How do I get this child to comply?" and start asking "What is this child's nervous system telling me?" everything changes. PDA kids aren't giving us a hard time — they're having a hard time. And when we lead with autonomy, safety, and compassion, we give them what they actually need to come back to calm and connection.

That child who waits for you to start every sentence? In this replay I sit down with SLP Alexandria Zachos — founder of Meaningful Speech — to talk about how years of prompting quietly create prompt dependence, and how silence, connection, and a child-led approach help gestalt language processors find their own spontaneous voice.
Prompting doesn't lead to spontaneous language. Connection, silence, and meeting a child where they are do.
Gestalt language processing (GLP) is a normal, natural way of developing language — just a different path than the analytic, word-by-word route most of us were taught. Alex walks us through what it actually is, how the stages unfold from delayed echolalia to flexible, novel grammar, and why so many kids we've labeled "echolalic" or "scripting" are simply gestalt language processors who need a different kind of support.
We also dig into the hard truth about prompting — why fill-in-the-blank, cloze phrases, and always initiating for a child can lead to prompt dependence — and what to do instead: natural language modeling, honoring all communication, and trusting silence to make room for language to emerge.
We'll talk about:
●  what gestalt language processing is — and why it isn't a disorder
●  the six stages of gestalt language development, from delayed echolalia to complex grammar
●  how prompting and compliance-based strategies create prompt dependence over time
●  why our ultimate goal is spontaneous, flexible, multimodal communication
●  how silence, connection, and being a trusted communication partner change everything
●  why it's never too late for an older child who has become prompt dependent
In This Episode, You'll Learn
•  What gestalt language processing is, and how it differs from analytic language development
•  How the stages unfold — delayed echolalia, mitigated echolalia, the "magic" word-freeing stage, and grammar
•  Why delayed echolalia is always communicating something, even when it isn't literal
•  How to do "detective work" to figure out what a child's gestalt actually means
•  Why years of prompting and cloze phrases lead to prompt dependence, not spontaneous language
•  What targeted natural language modeling looks like across communicative functions
•  Why "the change starts with us," not with fixing the child
•  How silence and the OWL approach (Observe, Wait, Listen) create space for language to emerge
•  Why acknowledging all communication — a smile, a nod, a repeat — builds the trust language grows from
Key Takeaways
•  Gestalt language processing is a natural way of developing language, not a disorder
•  Delayed echolalia is meaningful — it's communicating something worth investigating
•  Prompting does not build spontaneous communicators; child-led support does
•  Our goal is spontaneous, flexible, novel communication — including through AAC
•  Change starts with what we model and how we respond, not with the child
•  Silence is a strategy: spontaneous language emerges when the pressure is off
•  Acknowledge all communication to build the relationship and trust
•  Use a child's own gestalts — and put them into AAC — for instant buy-in
•  It's never too late for an older, prompt-dependent child
Try This
•  Notice how often you prompt, question, or fill in the blank — then try saying less
•  Use the OWL approach: observe, wait, and listen before you speak
•  Let silence sit; follow the child's lead and join what they love
•  Acknowledge every attempt to communicate with a repeat, a smile, or a nod
•  Model language naturally instead of asking the child to perform it
•  When you hear a gestalt, do some detective work to learn what it means
•  Add a child's gestalts into their AAC device for automatic buy-in
•  With an older prompt-dependent child, plan low-pressure sessions to rebuild trust first
Related Resources & Links
💚 Alexandria Zachos — Meaningful Speech (free masterclass on echolalia & child-led therapy)
💚 Meaningful Speech — Beginner's Guide to AAC (free masterclass)
💚 Natural Language Acquisition by Marge Blanc
💚 Free Visual Support Starter Set
💚 Autism Little Learners Membership
When we stop trying to pull language out of a child and start building a relationship they feel safe in, something shifts. Gestalt language processors don't need more prompting — they need us to slow down, model naturally, honor every way they communicate, and trust that the silence is doing work too. That's where spontaneous, joyful communication has room to grow.