April 2, 2025 • 16 mins
If your gut says “this test isn’t showing the full story,” trust it – especially when working with Autistic children.
I'm sharing a live Q&A on Instagram (@play.learn.chat) every day Mon–Fri this week (31st March–4th April) – share a Q by DM or email me! Ask Qs about Neurodiversity Affirming Speech Therapy support for Autistic Children, or Qs about my course Affirming Communication for Autistic Children!
“We communicate in a different way. It’s not wrong. But standardised assessments will often make it seem like it is.” – Adina Levy
Answering Qs and sharing thoughts about:
• why standardised assessments often fail to capture an Autistic child's communication
• what to do instead: connection-first approaches and the CPIE assessment framework
• how a custom AI tool can help reframe your report language to be more affirming
To get deeper and more actionable support around these topics and more, join me in my course!
The Affirming Communication for Autistic Children Course is NOW OPEN for enrolments! Doors close on Friday 4th April, 1pm Sydney time (AEDT)
All the info is here:
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hi folks.
It is Thursday, it is right on 12 o'clock.
I am here doing my fourth liveq and a session of the week.
The question that I've got in front of metoday, I'm just gonna dive straight into
it, is about, it's from a speech therapistsaying that she works in a school.
She has just started workingwith a young autistic boy.
(00:20):
He's really quiet.
He barely spoke at all in the firstsession, and she used a standardized
assessment, wasn't sure what else to do,but didn't feel like it told her much.
Good.
So like, yeah, you're on the right track.
Um.
Yeah, to reflect that thestandardized assessment didn't
quite do the whole thing.
He didn't really engage.
It didn't feel like gettingan accurate picture.
She's got parent and teacher reportsthat he talks a lot, especially
(00:42):
about animals and Minecraft whodoesn't, they're awesome topics.
Um, and so yeah, that's very different towhat she was seeing in that first session.
Yeah, none of this iscompletely surprising.
If you are autistic or if you have anautistic client, student, if you've met an
autistic person, you might recognize this.
(01:03):
This idea that.
Who we see in the very first meetingmight be very, very different to, uh,
you know, who that child actually is,what they can actually do, or who we
are and all of our actual capacities.
When it's an unfamiliar person,an unfamiliar setting, perhaps
an unmotivating situation like.
For many kids doing a standardizedassessment is just not very interesting
(01:26):
or motivating or exciting as well.
You know, like why?
What's the why?
And for us autistic folks understandingwhy we should be doing anything
can be even more important.
Um, otherwise.
Yeah.
Like what, what, what are we doing here?
Um, so what I wanted to share isin my affirming communication for
Autistic Children course, I havea whole module where we talk about
(01:48):
what affirming, uh, communicationassessment is for autistic kids.
Just to be clear, I'm not talkingabout doing an assessment to determine
whether a child is autistic or not.
That's outside the scope of this course.
This module specifically isabout when you know, or you think
that a child might be autistic.
(02:08):
Often the ways we work with kids whoare or may be, um, a certain neurotype,
it doesn't make a big difference.
We're still seeing them for who theyare, supporting them for who they are.
But in this case, we're gonna say fora child who is autistic, how do you do
an affirming communication assessment?
And I think the hunch of this particularspeech therapist is really spot on.
It's the fact that sometimes we mightgo to the standardized assessments.
(02:33):
Because either we have to, ifwe're working within really rigid
funding or education systems wherewe actually unfortunately have
to provide results of a certainassessment, I acknowledge this happens.
It's a really like ecologicallyinvalid way of doing any
kind of support for people.
But that's the, that's the truth.
And so maybe you just have to do it.
(02:54):
Go through the motions.
That's one piece.
If you have.
All the ability to choosewhat kind of assessment you're
doing with an autistic child.
I would almost never do astandardized assessment in this case.
Um, you've already got it started, soyou might wanna continue as long as it
wasn't causing the child actual distress.
(03:14):
But what's super, superimportant is that you're thinking
about how you report on this.
Make sure that you are reallycontextualizing that, uh, the results
of the standardized assessmentas just a small piece of all the
information about that child.
It is so far from the fullpicture, you already know that.
Um.
So what else do you do?
(03:35):
Uh, look, first of all, I think it'sreally important to build relationship
first and then assess and report ifpossible, if you can take time to do it.
It sounds like already you've had yourfirst session and you didn't have to
have that whole assessment complete then.
So that's good news.
Some services.
You are bound to this.
DO assessment in that firstsession, complete report,
(03:58):
and then get on with therapy.
And that doesn't always work.
In fact, it rarely works to get areal, genuine, good assessment of
an autistic child's communicationcapability if they are.
Um, if we have to, if we feel likewe have to do all the assessment and
then reporting after just that veryfirst meeting, it's just not gonna
(04:18):
be very representative of the child.
So if you can build relationshipfirst and then return to more
formal assessment, great.
You may not even need to return tomore formal assessment, building
connection, even within that session.
So finding space, you know, inyour second session to connect with
that child, have some engagement.
And if you do feel like.
Or you know, that you need to dosome formal, uh, like assessment
(04:41):
activities still within that session.
Build a relationship.
First, have connection, do somethingmuch more child led, engaging, and
that is still part of your assessment.
So having this ongoing, dynamic,real life, observational, rational
way to understand how a childcommunicates and interacts.
(05:03):
Is it's essential, absolutely essential.
It can't be missing from anyof our assessments for any of
the kids that we're supporting.
Even more important for theautistic kids that we're working
with, because, well, many reasons.
One of them standardize assessments,leave out so many people in their
standardizing uh, populations.
(05:23):
So very often neurodivergentkids are excluded from.
Who is in that representative sample.
In that assessment, very often there'sunder significant underrepresentation
for people who are not white, not ofthe mainstream dominant culture, for
people who are disabled in any way.
(05:45):
Uh, it, it's just, I don't know.
Maybe this is my rebel autistic brain.
I, I kind of hatestandardized assessments.
Okay.
They have a place.
They have a place, but.
Too often in our industry, standardizedassessments are prized as some
gold standard concrete thing tohold onto and, and often at the
(06:07):
expense of clinical judgment.
Anyway.
As always, I could talk onand on and on about this.
Um, I do, I do in my course affirmingcommunication for Autistic Children.
The whole of module one is allabout affirming assessments.
Now, this is such a crucial part of howwe proceed with supporting autistic kids.
(06:27):
You need to understand who isthis whole child in front of you?
How do they communicate and interact, not.
As a benchmark against a bunchof other kids who are not like
them because something we knowabout autistic communication, we
communicate in a different way.
It is not wrong.
The standardized assessments willlikely have us feel that it is wrong.
(06:50):
Um.
It's a different culture, it'sa different communication.
I'm not gonna lump us all into one bucketand say, we all communicate in this way.
There are tendencies.
There are, you know, commonalitiesbetween many of us autistic folks,
and they're often very different tohow neurotypical people communicate.
So you might get pragmaticcommunication checklists that will
(07:14):
punish someone for info dumping, but.
I mean, what am I doing here?
I've made a career out of info dumping,info dumping, if that's not familiar
term, is basically just, you know,sharing a whole lot of stuff on one topic.
Uh, I ps I appreciate youbeing here, allowing me to
info dump with you or at you.
Um, and.
(07:35):
Sorry, I just had a little sidebarof, I'm interrupting myself also.
Not very, um Okay.
In neurotypical circles, but inneurodivergent communication it
can go all over the shop, so, yeah.
I'm just checking.
I haven't missed any messages.
Anyway, hello to those of you whoare here live by, live by the way.
Um, I'm just gonna have a littlethink if I've missed, oh, yeah.
(07:56):
I have missed talking aboutsomething, a whole aspect of
talking about this communication.
This child's communication,you've met them once.
You're seeing them in this strangecontext, strange to them, context.
And you're not getting a representativeview of their communication.
The other thing you absolutely needto do is be taking into account
(08:16):
things like parent report, teacherreport, um, even getting videos
like getting parents, teachers, ifpossible, trickier for teachers.
Uh, getting parents at least to sendvideos of that child communicating
and interacting in their more.
Familiar place with their morefamiliar communication partners
about their more familiar topics.
That is going to tell you a whole lotabout the range of their communication
(08:40):
abilities and the impact of theenvironment and the communication
partner, and the interaction betweenthe child and the communication partner.
That's the information that really leadsus to get a genuine, deep understanding
of what's going on for the child.
And what's tricky or even what'stricky for the grownups around them
to understand how to best supportthe child in their communication.
(09:03):
All of that to say, I have aframework that I teach, which I've
covered actually all bits of it here.
I call it C pie, as in the letter CIdunno which way the video is going.
Um, and pie as in pie that you eat.
Uh, so CPIE, which is basicallyfour domains for areas that
you must include when you'reassessing, should be any child.
(09:26):
An absolutely an autistic child.
C is for the child.
So make sure that you are, um oh.
Look, I got a little thumbs up.
Um, a you're doing an assessmentof the child's communication
style, their interests, uh, quitea descriptive view, ideally, um,
of their, you know, the routines.
What gives them joy, what frustrates them?
(09:46):
What are their goals for themselvesfor, well, P in CPA is for partner, so.
Factors around their main communicationpartners skills, abilities,
goals, beliefs, expectations.
So it could be parents, could beteacher, could be you as well.
Um, you may not document that foryourself in the report, but you might,
I hope you do reflect on your ownimpact on that interaction as well.
(10:11):
Um, I is interaction.
So we've got the child and we've gotthe parent or the partner, or the
teacher or the therapist as two people.
And the interaction is what connectsus is what connects the two people.
So there's always a dynamic there, andif there's something you can report on,
what helps to strengthen that interaction?
Where is it aligned?
Like where does the child have acommunication style that really
(10:33):
matches or mismatches with acommunication partner, for example?
Uh, and then an E is the environment.
So that is what encompasseseverything else.
So the environment is somethingwe have to be thinking about
and noting in our reports.
Things like what is the impactof the physical environment?
Um, changes of routine, uh,sensory impacts as well.
(10:54):
So if there's, you know, if the child'svery sensitive to sound, what's the
impact of having, uh, being in theclassroom that's next to the road?
There's a lot of sound going on.
I say that as an example 'cause Ican hear some street noise over here.
Slightly distracting, but that's okay.
Um.
Uh, yeah.
Anyway, so all of that, I go throughthis in so much depth with cases,
(11:15):
with examples, templates, and I evenprovide you with a custom chat GPT
tool that I've created, um, whichhelps you figure out what exact kind of
language you could use that turns your.
Report language into moreneurodiversity affirming language.
Uh, now I have this as a PDF.
(11:36):
Some of you may have, uh, like gotthat and read that, but A PDF, it's
just a PDF when you actually, youknow, you're in the middle of writing
a report for a client and you think,okay, I wanna write something.
Um, I'm just gonna give an example hereof like non non affirming language.
Sorry about my hand there.
Uh, just gotta move that like youmight, let's say, typically have
written, um, we'll go with Billy.
(11:58):
So we're gonna de-identify.
It's not really Billy.
Billy presents with significantdeficits in pragmatic language,
including poor eye contact, difficultyinitiating conversations, and a lack
of understanding and non-verbal cues.
So I'm literally gonna putthis into my, um, custom nd
affirming report language bot.
So it's a custom chat GPT bot, basicallythat I've created and trained to.
(12:22):
You literally can paste in yourreport language, but don't, um.
Yeah, it, it, it cautions you.
Don't share identifying information.
Um, it doesn't go throughto me or anything.
We just don't know a hundredpercent where it goes next.
So as long as you just writelike child or, uh, an initial,
that's all good anyway.
Um, so let's see what it doeswith that little piece of, uh,
(12:44):
non affirming report language.
Also, the other caution is itdoes remind you that you are the
clinician, you are the professional.
So you do need to ensure thatwhat it suggests to you actually
is true and comprehensive anduseful in describing that child.
Uh, so here's another, uh,like an affirming reframe.
It suggests.
Billy communicates in ways that maydiffer from neurotypical expectations.
(13:07):
He tends to use limited eyecontact and often requires
support to initiate conversationsand interpret nonverbal cues.
These differences are consistent withcommunication styles commonly ever,
uh, observed in autistic individuals.
Not bad.
I'd probably do some tweaking.
Um, I say not bad.
I created this, I trained it.
So yeah, look, it'snever gonna be perfect.
It's ai, but this islike, if you can't, um.
(13:29):
You know, you're figuringit out in the moment.
You're sitting there writingyour report and you think, okay,
I know this isn't quite it.
How else could I write it?
I hope that this could be a bit ofa thinking partner to spark you, uh,
kind of creating your reports in a way.
And it's not just aboutwhat you're writing.
It's really gonna help you reframeyour thinking about how you
approach supporting a child, how youapproach a child's communication.
(13:50):
So this tool, I've had great feedbackfrom the speeches that have let
me know so far how helpful it.
Speed for them.
This is one of the three AI toolsin my affirming communication
for autistic children course.
Can you hear that noise?
There's a plane going overthat's very distracting.
Environmental noise for me.
I'm okay.
I hope you are too.
Um, so in my course there's so much,but yeah, I provide three tools and
(14:11):
there might be more in the future ifyou let me know that an AI version
of something will help you, um, youknow, really take what I teach and
put it into action in your daily life.
Let me know 'cause I can create it.
I want to make your life easy.
I wanna make it, um, reallystraightforward for you to go from this,
the, the theory, the understanding,learning about neurodiversity affirming
(14:34):
approaches with autistic kids andgo straight into, and now I know
how to apply it, and now I've gotthe tools and support to apply it.
And in the application you'llcontinue to learn as well.
So that is all I wantedto share for today.
Thank you so much for being here.
I will say in.
One day and 45 minutes from this momentas I'm recording at 1:00 PM Friday,
(14:57):
the 4th of April, Sydney time, doorsclose for my affirming communication
for Autistic children course.
My course for speech therapists,there are over 300 by now.
I probably need to update it.
I think we're at about 350.
Speech therapists have already joinedand participated in the course and
I've had such amazing feedback.
I'm so grateful.
And, uh, on average there's been.
(15:18):
4.7 star feedback out of fivepossible stars, um, over a
hundred people who've rated it.
So I, uh, think I, youknow, like to share that.
Like, it's, it's not perfect and I'malways learning and improving and
you can see I'm so, so proud of it.
It's an amazing course, amazingpractical, um, way to help you
take these great intentions.
(15:39):
You want to support your autisticclients in affirming ways.
You have that in you and what youmay not have is so much time to, to
sit and do the learning, or time toprocess the changes that you need
to make in your report, templates inyour business and clinical structures.
All of these things, theytake time and effort.
And my hope is to help youshortcut that with all the tools
(16:01):
and support that I provide.
So anyway, if you have morequestions, I'll be popping back up on
Instagram for a quick live on Friday,tomorrow at 12:00 PM Sydney time.
And uh, yeah, I'll be ableto answer any questions.
So send me a message, send me anemail, and I will chat to you tomorrow.
Have a great day.
Hi folks.
It is Thursday, it is right on 12 o'clock.
I am here doing my fourth liveq and a session of the week.
The question that I've got in front of metoday, I'm just gonna dive straight into
it, is about, it's from a speech therapistsaying that she works in a school.
She has just started workingwith a young autistic boy.
(00:20):
He's really quiet.
He barely spoke at all in the firstsession, and she used a standardized
assessment, wasn't sure what else to do,but didn't feel like it told her much.
Good.
So like, yeah, you're on the right track.
Um.
Yeah, to reflect that thestandardized assessment didn't
quite do the whole thing.
He didn't really engage.
It didn't feel like gettingan accurate picture.
She's got parent and teacher reportsthat he talks a lot, especially
(00:42):
about animals and Minecraft whodoesn't, they're awesome topics.
Um, and so yeah, that's very different towhat she was seeing in that first session.
Yeah, none of this iscompletely surprising.
If you are autistic or if you have anautistic client, student, if you've met an
autistic person, you might recognize this.
(01:03):
This idea that.
Who we see in the very first meetingmight be very, very different to, uh,
you know, who that child actually is,what they can actually do, or who we
are and all of our actual capacities.
When it's an unfamiliar person,an unfamiliar setting, perhaps
an unmotivating situation like.
For many kids doing a standardizedassessment is just not very interesting
(01:26):
or motivating or exciting as well.
You know, like why?
What's the why?
And for us autistic folks understandingwhy we should be doing anything
can be even more important.
Um, otherwise.
Yeah.
Like what, what, what are we doing here?
Um, so what I wanted to share isin my affirming communication for
Autistic Children course, I havea whole module where we talk about
(01:48):
what affirming, uh, communicationassessment is for autistic kids.
Just to be clear, I'm not talkingabout doing an assessment to determine
whether a child is autistic or not.
That's outside the scope of this course.
This module specifically isabout when you know, or you think
that a child might be autistic.
(02:08):
Often the ways we work with kids whoare or may be, um, a certain neurotype,
it doesn't make a big difference.
We're still seeing them for who theyare, supporting them for who they are.
But in this case, we're gonna say fora child who is autistic, how do you do
an affirming communication assessment?
And I think the hunch of this particularspeech therapist is really spot on.
It's the fact that sometimes we mightgo to the standardized assessments.
(02:33):
Because either we have to, ifwe're working within really rigid
funding or education systems wherewe actually unfortunately have
to provide results of a certainassessment, I acknowledge this happens.
It's a really like ecologicallyinvalid way of doing any
kind of support for people.
But that's the, that's the truth.
And so maybe you just have to do it.
(02:54):
Go through the motions.
That's one piece.
If you have.
All the ability to choosewhat kind of assessment you're
doing with an autistic child.
I would almost never do astandardized assessment in this case.
Um, you've already got it started, soyou might wanna continue as long as it
wasn't causing the child actual distress.
(03:14):
But what's super, superimportant is that you're thinking
about how you report on this.
Make sure that you are reallycontextualizing that, uh, the results
of the standardized assessmentas just a small piece of all the
information about that child.
It is so far from the fullpicture, you already know that.
Um.
So what else do you do?
(03:35):
Uh, look, first of all, I think it'sreally important to build relationship
first and then assess and report ifpossible, if you can take time to do it.
It sounds like already you've had yourfirst session and you didn't have to
have that whole assessment complete then.
So that's good news.
Some services.
You are bound to this.
DO assessment in that firstsession, complete report,
(03:58):
and then get on with therapy.
And that doesn't always work.
In fact, it rarely works to get areal, genuine, good assessment of
an autistic child's communicationcapability if they are.
Um, if we have to, if we feel likewe have to do all the assessment and
then reporting after just that veryfirst meeting, it's just not gonna
(04:18):
be very representative of the child.
So if you can build relationshipfirst and then return to more
formal assessment, great.
You may not even need to return tomore formal assessment, building
connection, even within that session.
So finding space, you know, inyour second session to connect with
that child, have some engagement.
And if you do feel like.
Or you know, that you need to dosome formal, uh, like assessment
(04:41):
activities still within that session.
Build a relationship.
First, have connection, do somethingmuch more child led, engaging, and
that is still part of your assessment.
So having this ongoing, dynamic,real life, observational, rational
way to understand how a childcommunicates and interacts.
(05:03):
Is it's essential, absolutely essential.
It can't be missing from anyof our assessments for any of
the kids that we're supporting.
Even more important for theautistic kids that we're working
with, because, well, many reasons.
One of them standardize assessments,leave out so many people in their
standardizing uh, populations.
(05:23):
So very often neurodivergentkids are excluded from.
Who is in that representative sample.
In that assessment, very often there'sunder significant underrepresentation
for people who are not white, not ofthe mainstream dominant culture, for
people who are disabled in any way.
(05:45):
Uh, it, it's just, I don't know.
Maybe this is my rebel autistic brain.
I, I kind of hatestandardized assessments.
Okay.
They have a place.
They have a place, but.
Too often in our industry, standardizedassessments are prized as some
gold standard concrete thing tohold onto and, and often at the
(06:07):
expense of clinical judgment.
Anyway.
As always, I could talk onand on and on about this.
Um, I do, I do in my course affirmingcommunication for Autistic Children.
The whole of module one is allabout affirming assessments.
Now, this is such a crucial part of howwe proceed with supporting autistic kids.
(06:27):
You need to understand who isthis whole child in front of you?
How do they communicate and interact, not.
As a benchmark against a bunchof other kids who are not like
them because something we knowabout autistic communication, we
communicate in a different way.
It is not wrong.
The standardized assessments willlikely have us feel that it is wrong.
(06:50):
Um.
It's a different culture, it'sa different communication.
I'm not gonna lump us all into one bucketand say, we all communicate in this way.
There are tendencies.
There are, you know, commonalitiesbetween many of us autistic folks,
and they're often very different tohow neurotypical people communicate.
So you might get pragmaticcommunication checklists that will
(07:14):
punish someone for info dumping, but.
I mean, what am I doing here?
I've made a career out of info dumping,info dumping, if that's not familiar
term, is basically just, you know,sharing a whole lot of stuff on one topic.
Uh, I ps I appreciate youbeing here, allowing me to
info dump with you or at you.
Um, and.
(07:35):
Sorry, I just had a little sidebarof, I'm interrupting myself also.
Not very, um Okay.
In neurotypical circles, but inneurodivergent communication it
can go all over the shop, so, yeah.
I'm just checking.
I haven't missed any messages.
Anyway, hello to those of you whoare here live by, live by the way.
Um, I'm just gonna have a littlethink if I've missed, oh, yeah.
(07:56):
I have missed talking aboutsomething, a whole aspect of
talking about this communication.
This child's communication,you've met them once.
You're seeing them in this strangecontext, strange to them, context.
And you're not getting a representativeview of their communication.
The other thing you absolutely needto do is be taking into account
(08:16):
things like parent report, teacherreport, um, even getting videos
like getting parents, teachers, ifpossible, trickier for teachers.
Uh, getting parents at least to sendvideos of that child communicating
and interacting in their more.
Familiar place with their morefamiliar communication partners
about their more familiar topics.
That is going to tell you a whole lotabout the range of their communication
(08:40):
abilities and the impact of theenvironment and the communication
partner, and the interaction betweenthe child and the communication partner.
That's the information that really leadsus to get a genuine, deep understanding
of what's going on for the child.
And what's tricky or even what'stricky for the grownups around them
to understand how to best supportthe child in their communication.
(09:03):
All of that to say, I have aframework that I teach, which I've
covered actually all bits of it here.
I call it C pie, as in the letter CIdunno which way the video is going.
Um, and pie as in pie that you eat.
Uh, so CPIE, which is basicallyfour domains for areas that
you must include when you'reassessing, should be any child.
(09:26):
An absolutely an autistic child.
C is for the child.
So make sure that you are, um oh.
Look, I got a little thumbs up.
Um, a you're doing an assessmentof the child's communication
style, their interests, uh, quitea descriptive view, ideally, um,
of their, you know, the routines.
What gives them joy, what frustrates them?
(09:46):
What are their goals for themselvesfor, well, P in CPA is for partner, so.
Factors around their main communicationpartners skills, abilities,
goals, beliefs, expectations.
So it could be parents, could beteacher, could be you as well.
Um, you may not document that foryourself in the report, but you might,
I hope you do reflect on your ownimpact on that interaction as well.
(10:11):
Um, I is interaction.
So we've got the child and we've gotthe parent or the partner, or the
teacher or the therapist as two people.
And the interaction is what connectsus is what connects the two people.
So there's always a dynamic there, andif there's something you can report on,
what helps to strengthen that interaction?
Where is it aligned?
Like where does the child have acommunication style that really
(10:33):
matches or mismatches with acommunication partner, for example?
Uh, and then an E is the environment.
So that is what encompasseseverything else.
So the environment is somethingwe have to be thinking about
and noting in our reports.
Things like what is the impactof the physical environment?
Um, changes of routine, uh,sensory impacts as well.
(10:54):
So if there's, you know, if the child'svery sensitive to sound, what's the
impact of having, uh, being in theclassroom that's next to the road?
There's a lot of sound going on.
I say that as an example 'cause Ican hear some street noise over here.
Slightly distracting, but that's okay.
Um.
Uh, yeah.
Anyway, so all of that, I go throughthis in so much depth with cases,
(11:15):
with examples, templates, and I evenprovide you with a custom chat GPT
tool that I've created, um, whichhelps you figure out what exact kind of
language you could use that turns your.
Report language into moreneurodiversity affirming language.
Uh, now I have this as a PDF.
(11:36):
Some of you may have, uh, like gotthat and read that, but A PDF, it's
just a PDF when you actually, youknow, you're in the middle of writing
a report for a client and you think,okay, I wanna write something.
Um, I'm just gonna give an example hereof like non non affirming language.
Sorry about my hand there.
Uh, just gotta move that like youmight, let's say, typically have
written, um, we'll go with Billy.
(11:58):
So we're gonna de-identify.
It's not really Billy.
Billy presents with significantdeficits in pragmatic language,
including poor eye contact, difficultyinitiating conversations, and a lack
of understanding and non-verbal cues.
So I'm literally gonna putthis into my, um, custom nd
affirming report language bot.
So it's a custom chat GPT bot, basicallythat I've created and trained to.
(12:22):
You literally can paste in yourreport language, but don't, um.
Yeah, it, it, it cautions you.
Don't share identifying information.
Um, it doesn't go throughto me or anything.
We just don't know a hundredpercent where it goes next.
So as long as you just writelike child or, uh, an initial,
that's all good anyway.
Um, so let's see what it doeswith that little piece of, uh,
(12:44):
non affirming report language.
Also, the other caution is itdoes remind you that you are the
clinician, you are the professional.
So you do need to ensure thatwhat it suggests to you actually
is true and comprehensive anduseful in describing that child.
Uh, so here's another, uh,like an affirming reframe.
It suggests.
Billy communicates in ways that maydiffer from neurotypical expectations.
(13:07):
He tends to use limited eyecontact and often requires
support to initiate conversationsand interpret nonverbal cues.
These differences are consistent withcommunication styles commonly ever,
uh, observed in autistic individuals.
Not bad.
I'd probably do some tweaking.
Um, I say not bad.
I created this, I trained it.
So yeah, look, it'snever gonna be perfect.
It's ai, but this islike, if you can't, um.
(13:29):
You know, you're figuringit out in the moment.
You're sitting there writingyour report and you think, okay,
I know this isn't quite it.
How else could I write it?
I hope that this could be a bit ofa thinking partner to spark you, uh,
kind of creating your reports in a way.
And it's not just aboutwhat you're writing.
It's really gonna help you reframeyour thinking about how you
approach supporting a child, how youapproach a child's communication.
(13:50):
So this tool, I've had great feedbackfrom the speeches that have let
me know so far how helpful it.
Speed for them.
This is one of the three AI toolsin my affirming communication
for autistic children course.
Can you hear that noise?
There's a plane going overthat's very distracting.
Environmental noise for me.
I'm okay.
I hope you are too.
Um, so in my course there's so much,but yeah, I provide three tools and
(14:11):
there might be more in the future ifyou let me know that an AI version
of something will help you, um, youknow, really take what I teach and
put it into action in your daily life.
Let me know 'cause I can create it.
I want to make your life easy.
I wanna make it, um, reallystraightforward for you to go from this,
the, the theory, the understanding,learning about neurodiversity affirming
(14:34):
approaches with autistic kids andgo straight into, and now I know
how to apply it, and now I've gotthe tools and support to apply it.
And in the application you'llcontinue to learn as well.
So that is all I wantedto share for today.
Thank you so much for being here.
I will say in.
One day and 45 minutes from this momentas I'm recording at 1:00 PM Friday,
(14:57):
the 4th of April, Sydney time, doorsclose for my affirming communication
for Autistic children course.
My course for speech therapists,there are over 300 by now.
I probably need to update it.
I think we're at about 350.
Speech therapists have already joinedand participated in the course and
I've had such amazing feedback.
I'm so grateful.
And, uh, on average there's been.
(15:18):
4.7 star feedback out of fivepossible stars, um, over a
hundred people who've rated it.
So I, uh, think I, youknow, like to share that.
Like, it's, it's not perfect and I'malways learning and improving and
you can see I'm so, so proud of it.
It's an amazing course, amazingpractical, um, way to help you
take these great intentions.
(15:39):
You want to support your autisticclients in affirming ways.
You have that in you and what youmay not have is so much time to, to
sit and do the learning, or time toprocess the changes that you need
to make in your report, templates inyour business and clinical structures.
All of these things, theytake time and effort.
And my hope is to help youshortcut that with all the tools
(16:01):
and support that I provide.
So anyway, if you have morequestions, I'll be popping back up on
Instagram for a quick live on Friday,tomorrow at 12:00 PM Sydney time.
And uh, yeah, I'll be ableto answer any questions.
So send me a message, send me anemail, and I will chat to you tomorrow.
Have a great day.
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