"what if they stopped speaking" -A post found on f

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Why is it actually that the classic autism kids have such a hard time speaking all the time were for us its intermittent? I know why we do it more so the Classic ones, when I was a young child (undiagnosed myself)I knew several classic cases and I always thought they simply only knew like 5 words, of course I was wrong. Is it constant sensory/brain overload, lack of control of the vocal chords or what? While I understand that meny can't and maybe even the why in part, the fact some can never ever talk ever at all still perplexes me. I'm just wondering if its more then our traits amplifyed, maybe this is a stupid question.

Jinks-When your cousin is forced to speak does the words and sentances he says have any quality to it or is just saying words for the sake of pleasing someone?

Every now and then I actually consider doing just that.

Also, when I'm stressed I type rather than speak to my husband though he's in the same room. He understands.

I frequently consider just not speaking anymore. Of course, that would get some strange reactions as I have been able to speak my entire life. It is very frustrating, though, when I can communicate something perfectly clearly in writing, but when I try to say the same thing out loud it comes out jumbled or I have a hard time getting my point across.

I am fortunate to have people in my life who realize that speech is actually a challenge for me, so they are willing to let me talk to them primarily through email or text.

For me I do not choose to not speak.
I often cannot speak.
I do not know how to make spoken words from the thoughts within my mind being among people.
I reach the point that I transform the visual thinking in my head into a voice-inside-me-thinking-being (but often uncontrolled or not coherent in the thought-process) among people if they are people I truly like and I want to communicate with them.
There are people I truly want to communicate with.
But then there are verbal thoughts in my head and they think verbally and continue to think verbally but I cannot make them go through my mouth and transform into spoken word.
Sometimes I truly want to speak to people because I want to connect with them.
But as I cannot transform the spoken inner thought into a spoken outer word start stimming a lot hoping people can "read" me.
I have this "conversation" in my head and it does not reach the outside.
I do not know how to do it.
So I keep repeating the conversation in my head over and over again but in the meanwhile I remain silent as I cannot find the speech inside me and put it outwards.
Then I start clinging to people (physically), because I want to connect, but people find it weird and reject me.
As I cannot transform the inner words into outer words I cannot explain that I clinge to connect with them.
I make patterns in stimming, but people do not understand my patterns.
Then I feel very lonely.

I agree, I think equating speech with independence is an NT-centric view of treatment (text to speech equipment and so on communicates "disablement" to other people, and is therefore far less desirable than the "normal" method of speech, even if it's far more difficult for the individual to achieve). NT people tend to place high value on social normality/acceptance/appearance and it doesn't seem to occur to most that autistic people don't share that level of value. I see this kind of mis-assumption happening a lot - the one that the primary desire of all autistic people must be to appear normal to others because that is the primary desire of most NTs. While I know many ASD people do want that, I rather suspect that the primary desire for most of us is the desire to communicate ourselves and operate in the world in the way which is most comfortable to us, and be accepted by others while doing it.

Unfortunately, I think the idea that the onus is on the neurotypical people to accept differences in others rather than on the autistic person to adapt their behaviours to meet neurotypical standards for acceptance may take a while to catch on.



It makes sense that something which is a mild issue (if an issue at all) for most higher-functioning autistic people is seen more severely in classic autism as it's the same for most autistic traits, but the cause is difficult to pin down. It would make sense to me from my own experience that it is related to sensory and/or emotional overload. I know that my difficulty communicating verbally is proportionate to my level of sensory overwhelm (the more people, noise, etc., the more difficulty I have). Also, fear or panic renders many autistic people (including myself) mute or near-mute, and I think that qualifies as massive overwhelm. Perhaps there is something in the way the autistic mind operates which causes speech to be one of the first things to shut down when input levels become too intense.

As for my cousin, it varies - sometimes he does not respond to prompts to "speak English" at all, sometimes he will say a few words, and occasionally he comes out with a sentence which is appropriate to the context. However, I don't think he would be doing it at all without the constant prompting, and I sometimes wonder how he would respond to other methods of communication - for example, he loves computers, but I don't think his family have ever tried encouraging him to communicate with one. Sort of related to what I said above, the assumption seems to be that it's talking or nothing, or even that if a person with working vocal equipment cannot communicate verbally they must not be able to communicate at all. I think that is a shame and it may also be a huge disservice to the autistic person involved.

I'm not Classic Autism, but I personally find speech to be awkward and physically demanding. Everything I do manage to say sounds labored and mechanical so people think I'm being rude or bossing people around. You will be lucky to hear me say 3 words per day.