Nonverbal vs, non speaking?

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So I have noticed some autistic bloggers use the phrase non speaking instead of nonverbal? Does anyone know why? Is there a distinct diffrence? Or a general prefrences? Sorry in not sure how to word this questions


Is there a diffrence if so what is it?


I'm also trying to decide since I use my aac apps to speak 98-99 percent of the time if it would be more appropriate for me to use non speaking or what term I should use if any

I think the terms are basically synonymous, but some people feel 'nonverbal' implies not being able to communicate by any modality (speech, sign, writing, AAC, etc). Literally, nonverbal just means not speaking, but some people don't like the connotations.

although its not a medical diagnosis;non verbal is a term associated with lifelong non verbalism through classic autism or other global developmental disabilities; someone who has never been any different,or was non verbal their whole life and became partly speaking,the individual will have had significant SALT help in childhood and in most cases still have had it as an adult.

people who are non speaking/have mutism are different,they have the oral,language,social and mental capacity to speak but for other reasons they cant or wont.
diagnosed aspies are not and never were non verbal in the traditional meaning,its part of the criteria,they always had the speech capacity but may be mute through things like anxiety, fatigue, introversion, meltdowns, not having anything to say etc,a lot of child aspies appear non verbal because they have mutism but they arent non verbal [not in the way the autism and autistic community as well as medical and care industry knows it], this is why so many diagnosed adult aspies today question if they coud have classic autism,but they woud not be diagnosed with aspergers if their speech impairment was directly caused by and attached to their autism as over four years old/significant speech delay and impairment is a disqualifier for aspergers.

Tanks this makes a lot of sense.

For me when I was little I was definatly speech delayed in ways related to autism. It took a lot of interventions before I gained the full verbal skills, when I started speak often I would miss half the words I was trying to say so it sounded a lot like

I wan da ahh free fru ba pop.

I used to get so angry cause in my head I completely knew what I had said but no one else did and frequently when I had thought I had said something I actually hadn't. I had a lot of trouble finding the words I wanted or needed

After becoming verbal though I lost stuff things I had utilized for functioning before . I also became more anxeous and for me being verbal can be painful, often over loading and I often feel very detached and out of it and still half the time what I need to say can't come out.

It was by accident after surgery for thyroid cancer that I realized being nonverbal or non speaking I could finally communicate better using my ipad, I had significantly less over loads, my anxiety went down and I could process sensory stuff better and felt more connected tand less off in a dream world type of thing. Less out of it?

Slowly I am gaining back blinking processes I lost and abilities I had lost even when verbal I could only communicate trivial things like things of my intrest and such but descriptive language and explaining things was very much a rare ability

Actually, more of us question it because of improper/incomplete assessments. When looking at evaluations and diagnoses for our sort of autism, where you are, and who diagnoses you, actually has more to do with what you're diagnosed with than your symptoms, for some sets of symptoms. Evaluations tend to be not nearly as complete as they should be, and even the long ones, tend to leave things out.

My evaluation was one of the more complete ones I've read about on here. Not one of the most best, but on the better side. I still, didn't actually have my early childhood looked at very completely. I had basic questions asked like "was she always like this", and that's about it." I don't think I've ever, in all the professionals I've seen for my autism, actually been asked if I had a speech delay. I know I've never been asked about other behaviors of when I was a child. I know, from reading notes about my childhood, that I was showing symptoms early on. These never came up in any diagnostic meeting.

I don't know enough about my early childhood for me to say confidently what I was like, and what my diagnosis should have been. I know what I feel most comfortable identifying with is just ASD, and that the DSM-5 diagnostic criteria describes me better than any of the DSM-IV ones do anyways. But I know that I question it, because none of the doctors actually checked, and every time someone makes assumptions about me because of my Asperger's diagnosis I'm the one who gets hurt, and just telling them I'm autistic, I tend to get better results.

^^^ It's strange. I didn't have any developmental delays and so therefor my diagnosis could only be Aspergers. But I identify more with the descriptions of what it is like to experience autism that are written by people with classic autism, as opposed to the ones written by those with Aspergers. And on top of that, I have just always preferred to use the term autism as opposed to Aspergers.

That makes sense to me