When Being Non-Speaking Hides Ability
The abilities of a non-speaking, profoundly autistic person are easily underestimated. A way to communicate may reveal the message behind behaviour.
When a person cannot speak, the people around them are constantly forced to make interpretations about what they understand, what they can do and what they are thinking. There is one rather serious problem with this: if a person cannot demonstrate their abilities in a way that others recognise, those abilities may be judged to be far below what they actually are.
Speech plays such a dominant role in how we judge intelligence that its absence can easily begin to colour everything else. If a person does not answer a question, we do not know whether it is because they did not understand, cannot form the response, cannot carry out the motor action required, do not have a suitable means of communication available, or are too overloaded to respond at that particular moment. Yet it is very easy for the people around them to reach one quick conclusion: they cannot do it.
Sometimes it is only when a suitable means of communication is found that we begin to see how much we may have underestimated.
A situation may look from the outside like challenging behaviour. A person may pull at someone’s leg, try to change their position or become upset when the other person does not understand what they want. Without a functioning means of communication, what remains visible is simply that they are pulling at another person.
Then a communication device becomes available, and the person is able to explain that the other person’s position is bothering them and that they want the leg straightened. Suddenly the whole situation looks different.
The behaviour was not random.
There had been a message in it all along.
That does not mean that all difficult behaviour can be explained this easily, or that every non-speaking person’s thoughts can suddenly be made visible by handing them a device. Communication can be slow, uncertain and highly dependent on the situation, level of arousal, motor abilities and how well the people around them understand and support the communication methods being used.
But that is exactly why the absence of speech should not be treated as evidence of an absence of understanding.
A non-speaking person may learn to use pictures, symbols, a communication app, objects, gaze, gestures or other methods far better than anyone initially expected. At the same time, things that were previously hidden from the people around them may begin to emerge: preferences, pain, irritation, humour, memories, recognition of people, wishes and perfectly ordinary everyday opinions.
This also changes the way challenging behaviour is understood. If a person has spent years getting their needs met through physical actions, vocalisations, pulling another person, throwing things or simply going to get what they want themselves, those methods cannot be expected to disappear the moment a communication device is placed in their hands. They first have to learn that the new way actually works and that the people around them will listen when they use it.
Giving someone a communication tool is only the beginning. The people around them have to learn how to use it with them and, most importantly, remember to offer the opportunity to communicate at exactly those moments when a situation is beginning to become difficult.
With a non-speaking person, it is very dangerous to keep our expectations of what they may still be able to learn too low. Goals should of course be based on the person’s actual abilities rather than wishful thinking, but an assessment made in childhood should not become a ceiling that nobody even tries to look beyond. People develop, communication methods develop and the understanding of the people around them develops.
Sometimes the person has not changed nearly as much as we ourselves have, those of us who have been given the chance to understand them.
© Satu Väänänen, Borrowed Peace 2026
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