Finding Your Child's Voice - Creating Safe Communication

In our last post, we talked about how the belief system you carry into parenting shapes everything — how fear-based theology tends to produce fear-based discipline, and how shifting your attention toward what your child does right changes the entire energy of your home. If you haven’t read that one yet, start there. It lays the foundation for everything we’re about to talk about.

Because this post goes one step further. This one is for the parents who are asking a harder question:

What does communication-first parenting look like when my child doesn’t have words yet?

Every Behavior Is a Message

Here is something that changes everything once you really understand it: your child is already communicating. Even if they have no spoken words. Even if they scream, bite, throw things, or shut down completely. That behavior is not random, and it is not defiance. It is a message — the only one they currently have the tools to send.

Research in applied behavior analysis has consistently shown that problem behavior in children with autism almost always serves a purpose. It is typically an attempt to communicate a want, a need, a boundary, or an emotion (Hanley, Jin, Vanselow, & Hanratty, 2014). When we respond to that behavior with punishment, we are essentially telling a child who cannot speak: “Your message was received, and you will be punished for sending it.”

Communication-first means we do the opposite. We find a way to give them a better tool to send that same message — and then we listen.

Finding the Right Tool

When we work with a nonspeaking child who has an autism diagnosis, our first job is not to eliminate the problem behavior. Our first job is to find the communication method that takes the least amount of effort for that specific child.

We try many things. AAC devices — apps on an iPad that speak for the child when they press a symbol. Sign language. Picture cards. Icons. Research supports all of these approaches, and augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) has been established as an evidence-based practice for nonspeaking autistic children (Steinbrunner et al., 2020, as cited in Ganz et al., 2022).

But here is what we have found in practice: the fastest tool to start with is often the simplest one. A single target. It might be a colored dot. It might be a small picture of a child’s favorite character, something unique they can quickly identify. Something that takes one touch, one gesture, one small movement.

We call this an omnibus mand — a single communication response that can mean many things. Yes. No. Stop. I need you. I need a break. More. Done. All from one simple touch.

This comes directly from Dr. Greg Hanley’s skill-based treatment model, which prioritizes teaching a functional communication response — one reliable signal — before anything else (Ghaemmaghami, Hanley, & Jessel, 2021). The goal is for that signal to become so trusted, so consistently honored, that the child discovers something profound: I have a voice. And it works.

What This Looks Like in Real Life - in a Child's Voice

Picture a child sitting on the floor with a bin of small plastic animals. They are sorting them, organizing them in their own system. It matters to them.

A therapist slowly reaches a hand toward the animals.

The child screams. Grabs the therapist’s hand. Pushes it away.

From a fear-based lens, that moment looks like defiance. Like a behavior problem that needs to be corrected.

From a communication-first lens, that moment looks like a child who just sent a very clear message: Stop. Those are mine. I was not finished.

So instead of correcting the push or the scream, the therapist takes the child’s hand — gently, hand over hand — and presses it to the target. Helping them learn the motion by repeating the process a few times (with at least 30 seconds in-between tries).

And something happens.

The screaming stops. The pushing stops. The child touches the target on their own. And then faster. And then without hesitation.

Their body settles. What was escalating fear and frustration becomes something almost calm — like a business transaction. You reached for my toys. I told you to stop. You stopped.

That is not a small moment. For a child who has perhaps never been able to make their wants understood before, in a calm manner, that moment is enormous.

Building the Relationship Inside the Communication

What happens next is where the real work lives — and where it gets exciting.

Once the child is reliably using the target to say my way or stop, we begin what Dr. Hanley’s research calls the skill-based treatment process. We start to build in gentle, brief moments of no — delivered calmly, without confrontation, and followed immediately by honoring what the child asked for (Hanley, 2012).

The child touches the target. We say, quietly: No. Three, two, one — okay, your way.

And we wait.

Sometimes the child goes still. Sometimes they look up. Sometimes real eye contact happens for the first time in a session. What we are watching in that moment is not defiance. It is a child learning that communication goes both ways. That the person across from them can be trusted even when the answer is no — because the no is brief, it is safe, and it always comes with a countdown and a resolution.

This is boundaries built on trust, not fear. The child voice has power and they make a brief choice - touch the target or lash out. They choose the one that takes the least amount of effort and gets them what they want.

This is what it looks like when the relationship comes first.

What Fear-Based Responding Does Instead

It is worth pausing here to name the alternative — because most of us have lived it or witnessed it.

When a child screams and pushes our hand away, and we respond from a place of fear — I cannot let them get away with this — we find ourselves stuck. Do we take the toys away? Do we raise our voice? Do we give in to stop the screaming?

Every one of those responses misses the message. And when a child’s message is ignored or punished long enough, the behavior escalates. It has to. They have no other option.

Fear-based responses to communication attempts do not teach children to behave. They teach children that their voice does not matter. And that lesson is one they will carry into every relationship.

The Thing That Never Gets Complicated

In this process, we never focus on: No, don’t do that. Don’t hit me. Don’t bite me.

The moment we start stacking instructions and corrections on top of each other, we have overcomplicated the communication for a child who is already working hard just to understand the world. We keep it simple. We keep it consistent. We keep it safe.

And we keep responding.

Because the Amplified Bible says in Proverbs 22:6, “Train up a child in the way he should go [and in keeping with his individual gift or bent], and when he is old he will not depart from it.”

Notice what it does not say. It does not say: punish a child until they comply. It says train — which implies patience, relationship, repetition, and knowing the child in front of you. Their bent. Their gift. Their way.

Communication-first is not a clinical technique. It is a way of seeing your child as a person with something to say — and deciding that your job is to help them say it.

That is the Golden Rule applied to the very first conversation.

It Is Never Too Late to Start

One more thing worth saying: this is not only for toddlers. We have worked with children from 18 months to 18 years old, and we always start in the same place. Simplified, effortless, safe communication — built around what that specific person can do right now. What it looks like at 18 months is different from what it looks like at 18 years. But the starting point is always the same. We find their voice first. Everything else follows.

References

Ganz, J. B., Hong, E. R., Goodwyn, F. D., Kite, E., & Flores, M. M. (2022). Augmentative and alternative communication for children with intellectual and developmental disability: A mega-review of the literature. Journal of Intellectual & Developmental Disability, 47(1).

Ghaemmaghami, M., Hanley, G. P., & Jessel, J. (2021). Functional communication training: From efficacy to effectiveness. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 54(1), 122–143.

Hanley, G. P. (2012). Functional assessment of problem behavior: Dispelling myths, overcoming implementation obstacles, and developing new lore. Behavior Analysis in Practice, 5(1), 54–72.

Hanley, G. P., Jin, C. S., Vanselow, N. R., & Hanratty, L. A. (2014). Producing meaningful improvements in problem behavior of children with autism via synthesized analyses and treatments. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 47(1), 16–36.

Rajaraman, A., Hanley, G. P., Gover, H. C., Staubitz, J. L., Staubitz, J. E., Simcoe, K. M., & Metras, R. (2021). Minimizing escalation by treating dangerous problem behavior within an enhanced choice model. Behavior Analysis in Practice, 15, 219–242.

The Holy Bible, Amplified Version. (1987). The Lockman Foundation.