"The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn."
- Alvin Toffler
Well, December had other plans in store! It was actually completely opposite😆. As the month progressed, what had seemed to be seamless and predictable became shaky, confusing and overwhelming! At one point I literally thought that I might have broken the child! Well, it turned out that Aisha went into a regression and overload phase. This post is all about that.
By the end of November I was certain that Aisha had achieved the milestone and we moved over to the next one- Initiates and sustains joint play with shared attention. Now this is an advanced milestone where the child learns to initiate on her own. That meant that Aisha now had to stay emotionally and cognitively present — sharing focus, enjoying the play, noticing cues, and taking turns more independently.
I would apply the same pause inside the routines, but now I am not going to show or give any cues as to what needs to be done. Instead, I will just pause and let her initiate the move. Her move might not be the right one for that activity and that is completely fine. The main aim, is to generalize this skill outside the play routines once they were acquired. Here’s what that looked like in practice.
Tower Building example: - I wanted to make use of the tower building game to start with this milestone. Tower building can be made fun and can be done with a variety of things at home. It is something that does not need just blocks but can be done with pillows, utensils, toys or anything for that matter. My aim is to have opportunities where I can introduce the pause and let Aisha initiate in different daily routines.
Here's how we began with a simple tower-building game. After every block I paused
completely — no talking, just waiting. When the tower was ready to fall, I froze with an expectant look and waited for any signal from Aisha. Even the smallest movement became her initiation. I matched her action with simple language - “tower… break!” — and we celebrated the crash together before starting again. The goal was not perfection, but giving her space to start the interaction herself.
Another important thing that I did was to also start with a communication milestone. I saw that Aisha still does not use 2 words at home or outside except when she is in her therapy settings. So I started with the milestone - Combines two words to make simple requests. The reason why I did that was because I wanted to follow the tenet - Joint Attention creates the urgency to connect -> connection creates the urgency to communicate and -> communication creates the urgency for speech. For children with Autism or other developmental differences, difficulties in forming Joint Attention often lead to delays in this entire, cascading sequence. Since Aisha was doing really well with joint attention, starting with this communication milestone seemed to be an absolute no brainer.
This milestone focused on helping Aisha move from gestures and single words toward simple word combinations, while building back-and-forth interaction through requests and responses.
Just like NDBI and JAML, I found MTW (More Than Words) approach that asked me to talk less, wait more, and let Aisha lead.
More Than Words (MTW) - is a parent-mediated approach that helps children learn language by using communication in real, meaningful moments rather than practicing answers. One of the Key MTW principle that I followed -
O.W.L. (The "Gold Standard" for Initiation) - Observe, Wait and Listen - This strategy is about getting out of the way so your child has the urgency to start the interaction.
During snack time I used a simple choice game with two cups hiding different items. I paused and waited for any signal — a look, reach, or gesture — then expanded it into a two-word model before revealing the snack immediately. The short, predictable turns created many natural opportunities to model language without pressure.
In this I will have multiple opportunities to model 2 words. I can also model Yes, No answers etc. This is what Success would look like -
Aisha stays in the loop and anticipates the reveal.
She uses signals(gestures, one or two words) confidently.
I am able to consistently model the 2 words.
Turns remain short, predictable and fun.
What I as a parent do not do -
I do not pressure for speech.
I do not rush through pauses.
I do not make it complex.
By the mid of the month I started noticing something. Aisha’s engagement was not the usual. She was not willing to engage in the activities. She was constantly tired. Dark circles appeared under her eyes. She would get irritated fast and would just lay down whenever possible. I thought that - oh, this might be the NDBI novelty factor was wearing off now and she got bored with what we were doing.
But in retrospect, December was a month where Aisha was literally overloaded. I had started with two heavy milestones. Then there was a function in her school for which rehearsals were going on. On top of that she had her therapy’s which we increased almost exponentially during the Christmas holidays and again on top of that I had the expectation that she will keep on engaging with me.
Looking back, this routine would have exhausted anyone. It just shows that as parents, caregivers I really did not understand Aisha. I put undue pressure, which stemmed from my expectations. This gets aggravated more when the child is autistic, delayed, cant speak, cant express, then we just keep on going, pushing to fulfill our agenda.
What happened was - Aisha, as any other autistic kid absorbed everything, she did not say, did not protest, but just kept on doing whatever was asked and expected out of her. Ultimately she got overloaded and that deepened the regression. She got hazy on all the skills that she had learnt in November. Some of them disappeared.
So the problem is that we parents, caregivers and in-fact anyone who interacts with a developmentally challenged child needs to be immensely attentive to the child’s behavior if we need to assess her situation correctly, as there is no social cues coming from the other side. This is exactly where the child shows meltdowns, low engagement, not willing to do something, always tired…which are basically ways of communicating and saying to us - “STOP!”.
The data made this visible. Let’s look at the JA graph for initiation,
Now lets look at the Early communication one - this graph truly mirrors the overload phase.
What Regression Taught Me:
There are a lot of things that I want to document which I believe are more of a lesson that I learnt.
Progress depends on nervous-system attunement more than technique.
Keep expectations dynamic. Understand that learning is not linear, I have to be ready to reduce therapy at home or at center whenever the child gives signals.
Regression was not Aisha losing skills — it is her nervous system asking for space to integrate them.
It is important to understand that during a regressive phase we do not push for new skills. Rather we need to reduce and maybe gently repeat the work on the previous skills. Pushing will not work and will make matters worse.
Our child needs rest when overloaded. The symptoms may look like this - low engagement, irritability, low energy, low appetite, falling sick etc.
Most importantly - I as a parent need to learn or understand that these are just phases. And as all phases, this will pass too. So no need to fret. Rather I just need to calibrate my expectations accordingly and be consistent.
Starting Again - Differently:
In this post we discussed many things, from starting strong to regression. But what happened after that? Well we did not stop! I went back to the last milestone for Joint Attention and gave Early Communication a break. Aisha loved that. She started to pick up the old skills again that we practiced in November. By the end of December, she was sprinting and that’s when I again started working on initiation and early communication, but this time we both know how to do it 👊. We didn’t move forward by doing more. We moved forward by learning when to step back 😇.
If you have made this far, then congratulations😛. I know this was long, but hang in there! We are on a roller coaster here, and in the next post we experience what rapid acquisition after regression looks like 💪!! Till then cya, and off course - HAPPY NEW YEAR from Aisha and me🙌!
