This page shares some of the nuances, and personal experiences, that have helped us round out how learning about NLA helps us support our kids.

Above all, what all of us have in common is that learning about GLP / NLA wasn’t a tool or method to push our kids to progress forward towards communicating in a typical way.  It was a way to learn how to enhance the joy and love of life that our kids already have, and further our relationship with our kids exactly as they are. It gave us new and exciting ways - or reinforced our existing ways - to connect with our kids.  It helped us find other families, teachers, and therapists to learn from.  It helped us solidify what NOT to do - do NOT find a speech therapist who focuses on analytical processes.  Do NOT pick up a cookie and say “coooookieeee” for an early stage GLP.

This framework helped us to recognize how our kids are ALREADY communicating - whether that’s with their mouths, or with Spotify, or playing 5 seconds of a YouTube clip over and over again. And if we can support them to say more things, or be understood by more people, that's great.  Being able to recognize that, in all of our cases, seemed to give our kids more confidence and growth.

On the pros of the NLA framework

• This framework presumes competence. Instead of assuming a nonspeaker is a blank slate of nothing that needs to be fixed, we observe how they specifically interact with, or process the world, and then expand on that.  All of the things that nonspeakers are processing is the starting point of supporting individual communication, rather than bombarding a nonspeaker with random adult driven, joint-attention “activities” and/or adult-driven language.
• This framework promotes a language first-approach to language development rather than wasting time on a social communication prerequisite approach (e.g. working on joint attention, shared eye gaze, pointing etc.)

Things to be careful of

• If this framework is used without considering your child as an individual, you risk making too broad of assumptions or generalizations about your kid, all GLPs, or all autistic people. Your kid is still unique and has many, many things that define them beyond being a GLP!
• If you are reading about GLP / NLA on social media, or through broad brushstrokes that aren’t focused on your specific non-speaking kid, you may find certain rules like don’t teach literacy until stage 3+, don’t ask questions, etc.  These guidelines are really generalizations for those who have reliable access to speech.  Please ignore them and focus on your own kid.  They *may* be absolutely accurate for your kid!  Or they may not be.  A nonspeaker may appear to be stage 1 but may also capable of doing literacy work with phonics or may be able to answer questions when given yes or no cards.  Or not!
• Similarly there are some messages out there that receptive language does not happen until a later stage, but for non-speakers we just do not know their internal experience. Although some of us did notice tangible differences when, we think, they moved through stages.  We *also* emphasize that it’s important to present information in a variety of ways (not just spoken) when we aren’t *sure* about their receptive language. The point is that we cannot generalize when we cannot know - so meet your kid where they are and get really creative about all the ways you can communicate. 
• There are conversations around GLP and literacy, and people sharing answers to what a GLP needs, or when they can read. However, nobody knows, and we’re concerned that this can result in gatekeeping literacy, especially phonics, and promoting poor teaching practices such as “whole word” instruction (e.g. Edmark curriculum).
• Sometimes a non-speaker could actually like or benefit from a more structured language approaches to support language.
• Some of us wonder if it even matters to know if a non-speaker is a GLP or not if we are taking a child-centered approach anyway, meeting someone where they are at, and celebrating how they communicate!  
• Being a GLP is not the *only* framework in how someone processes and interacts with language. There could be other autistic relationships to language, as well as dyspraxia, and other factors that make it so a kid doesn’t follow the framework exactly or fit neatly into a GLP box.

On some suggestions

• Lean in to multimodal communication (use of videos, home videos, YouTube, maps, songs, pushing a stroller around, etc).  Specifically, check out Pictello or Visual Scenes and try it out!  It may be game changing (or not!).
• We have found that we observe, and support how a non-speaker adds to, or edits, or remixes any kind of expression (not just speech!).  We may see that they add new sounds to vocalizations, or line up items in different ways, or pull up different versions of songs they like (OR they may HATE some of these), and we can use that information to support them in expanding their communication as well.  

On some things we’ve heard from some autistic adults

• Many autistic adults report that they do not outgrow the use of “cutting and pasting” language, remixing, and recombining language chunks to make themselves understood. These language chunks are grammatically correct and may not be detectable to others, and it may be assumed that single words or grammar are being self-generated when that may not be the case.
• If you are really focused on trying to figure out the stages for a non-speaker, you may incorrectly assume they’re at stage 1 or 2 and model those earlier stages, when for language processing they’re stage 4+ even though you can’t tell yet.
• There are fluently speaking autistic adults who identify as echolalic who explain that their use of language chunks to express themselves is life long, and is not just limited to using quotes. Some of them define their echolalia as being different than a gestalt.