As the literal name implies – the first step is processing – NOT expressing! Delayed Echolalia is an expression of GLP.
I’m sorry, but this is going to be another blog to call out BS! I’ve seen nothing but misinformation and ableists talking over us for the last 2 years (ever since you know who made the world think it’s ok to hate on minorities) – and I’m done putting up with it (I have been ‘done’ for a while actually, and I took a bit of a break). But from now…. I’m going to call this shit out now when I see it (if I have spoons). This isn’t about attacking anyone, this is about stopping the spread of shittery.
Warning NOTE: Yet another advocate bit the proverbial dust in the last 48 hours – and by that, I mean they hit burnout and can’t advocate anymore because of the enshitification of the world. When this happens, it hurts the Autistic Community as a whole – because there’s one less of us educating, one less calling out the crap – one less having the community heard properly and clearly. So – to that advocate – I’m sorry that people attacked you and you were hurt. And I’m sorry there’s one less of us out there. I hope you heal and get back to a space where you are feeling confident able and happy again. The rest of us will try and fit the gap (but no one can truly fill another person’s shoes). Rest up – take care.
So, with that in mind – I will say that this isn’t about attacking anyone, this is only about calling out harm when it occurs. I don’t want to contribute to anyone going into burnout/ or being hurt, as I know how it feels, but I still need to call it out – as it harms our community and causes misunderstandings and ill treatment of autistic and otherwise divergent people. So, please don’t take this personally – I’m not attacking you or your org – I’m trying to attack the misinformation in order to set the record straight, to help with understanding of GLP and of non-speakers who are GLP and to stop the spread of misinformation. I can’t help it if you take it personally – that’s on you… please seek help if you feel that way – as that was not my intent.
Back to GLP.
I’m a GLP – as you’d know if you’d read my blogs, books or listened to my podcasts. And so are my children. I have the lived experience of it, and it caused me and my children to be severely delayed in ableist mouth words (using speech as typical’s do). I’ve also studied it from the NT angle – and I’ve finally gathered the guts together to say the NT view of GLP is wrong, offensive and harmful to us.
Look: the NT population did a great job of identifying GLP and trying to understand it – they broke the story (so to speak). They figured out that autistics tend to process things differently – and then we (autistics and GLP’s) confirmed that with our lived experience. But I feel like that’s where the NT exploration and understanding stopped. No offence to NT’s – I’m actually praising you for doing the initial leg work and coming up with reasonable assumptions….. but please now start to listen to people with lived experience.
The original coined idea of GLP came from a certain person – and it was developed into courses for the general public by that person and other SLPs (speech language pathologists, which I do need to name below as I’m quoting them – but I’m not shaming them, I’m honouring the work they did – but saying more work is needed – so I apologise if you feel this personally or as an attack – it’s not intended as such).
I did like these GLP courses and still recommend them as a starting point to learning about gestalt processing…. But after you’ve learnt the basics from them – you need to unlearn some of what you’ve learned and learn some more from lived experience educators – like myself (and others who I will mention later). Or – go into the courses with a grain of salt in mind, and remember that the courses are built on the NT understanding of GLP.
The original concept of GLP – is that there are stages of GLP. If you don’t know them – you can google them (this is from google – who took it from Meaningful Speech.com):
The Six Stages of GLP
- Stage 1 (Whole Gestalts): Repeats full, memorized scripts, songs, or phrases verbatim (delayed echolalia) with meaning attached.
- Stage 2 (Mitigated Gestalts): Shortens, breaks down, or mixes pieces of memorized chunks into smaller, semi-unique combinations.
- Stage 3 (Single Words): Pulls out and uses single words independently for the first time, plus basic two-word combinations.
- Stage 4 (Beginning Grammar): Puts original words together to form simple, self-generated sentences and basic rules.
- Stage 5 (Advanced Grammar): Uses longer, more detailed sentences with correct verb tenses and descriptive words.
- Stage 6 (Complex Language): Produces fully original, spontaneous, and complex grammar like typical adult or peer speech
Why do I have a problem with this????? Because it looks at gestalt processing as only an outward expression of processing. It looks at it from the NT lens. And it approaches language development from a skewed view of typicality, typical development and typical speech.
Atypical people don’t develop typically – that’s the whole point of the “A”. And being a GLP makes you Atypical. Atypical people also come with co-occurring disabilities which can affect speech development, processing development, reading development, body /movement and control of body/movement development and much much more. Please follow someone like Nigh Functioning Autism or Mikeys (or check out my list of great advocates to follow in the back of my book 5) to find out more about helping non-speakers when they have apraxia, dyspraxia or motor disinhibition etc.
When a person says there are 6 or 2 or 50 stages in anything – please assume that it’s not a literal 6 stages…. And please presume that those stages are based on how NT’s notice 6 things- not on what is actually occurring beneath the surface.
Eg: There may be more stages of a simple reaction. You may see only the reaction (perhaps me yelling, hitting or running away) – which you would assume from looking at me- that I went through a ‘one stage’ process = straight to the yelling/hitting/running. But it’s more complicated than that.
For me to reach the point where I hit, yelled or ran – I went through a process of about 10 steps. All the stuff that went on before the running/hitting/yelling are still stages of the reaction – of the process of the reaction. And that’s what I’m talking about with GLP stages. A reaction can be involuntary, as in – it seems or feels that you have no control over it. But you brain and body still processes the situation, your feelings, your past trauma, your overload/stimulation in the moment and brings it all together in a trauma response (fight/flight – hit, yell, run etc).
There is still a ‘typical’ or gestalt process before the reaction. Speech is a reaction of a process – not the start of it. Speech is an expression of a process. As we age and develop, speech sometimes becomes more instantaneous and reactive and ‘easier’ in some people. But not for all. If you have apraxia/dyspraxia/motor disinhibition or other disabilities, speech can still be halted or difficult etc. If you have ADHD – speech can be more instantaneous (due to lack of impulse control etc) but there is still a process behind it. Me and my ADHD son infodump with speed talking – that looks instantaneous and not thought out /or through. But I can assure you, for us to be able to infodump on a topic at speed– we have investigated it, researched it to the fullest extent, and have gestalt/ monotropismed the shit out of it. The GLP has begun many stages before the outward speech has begun.
Another example: My brain getting to the point that I could write this infodump of a blog. I had to process everything that I needed to do today, plus everything that my kids needed to do today, plus everything that I saw, read on the news, social media and with advocates I follow, plus process the bs in the world, etc… then I had to segment all of that (compartmentalise them) in my brain (separate into smaller gestalts), so that I could focus on each individually, then I did a deep dive of each in my mind, then I picked one that gave me the ‘itchies’ (I chose one gestalt out of the many that make up the whole). In other words –I picked the one gestalt that felt the most urgent/ gave me dopamine/serotonin, and kept me focussed on that one thing long enough to write about it in detail (to break it down into even smaller gestalts – first the blog idea – then each gestalt paragraph – then each sentence).
Sometimes I get stuck in the bigger gestalt and cant’ break it down further – that’s where executive dysfunction occurs and I become unable to go to the next ‘stage’ of gestalt processing – eg: moving to the next stage / progressing of ‘doing’ or of actioning. All of the main stages of GLP occurs in the brain/body experience before any outward display of mouth words occurs.
The end result of a completed GLP process; is the infodumped blog that you see and read – the first stages of the GLP processing started in my sleep when I had nightmares about the shit I was still processing and hyperfixating on yesterday… then continued processing in gestalts today. When I hyperfixate in my brain – I pick out a huge gestalt – say “autism” – then I choose a topic within that to focus on…. Then break it down to smaller things. Then the end gestalt you see – is me speaking, writing or doing. This last ‘doing’ is what the makers of the “6 Stages of GLP” call “Stage 1” – for me – it’s the last stage, not the first. And this occurs forever – throughout our lives. Just because you now see ableist mouth words of complete sentence for us – does not mean that we’ve reached the ‘last stage’ of GLP…. It means that one human praised skill of “speaking” has been achieved today. It might not be achieved tomorrow, or the next, or even later today…. But it was achieved at one point when my GLP brain ended the GLP process with mouth words, or with writing, or with doing.
This is why they’ll also say the last ‘stage’ (Stage 6) is full language. NT’s love speech and deem it to be the ultimate in human functioning and experience. But that’s not where GLP ends. We don’t stop being GLP’s. We are GLP’s for life. We have monotropism brains for life. We are bottom-up thinkers for life. It’s all part of the one processing. It’s not separate…. Mouth words is just one stage of life development for a person, but not all people. But for NT’s looking at us from the outside – GLP seems like something that happens during childhood and ‘we grow out of it’. NO!!! We grow INTO it.
Speech is the outward expression of a gestalt that’s been processed to death – to the nth degree. Automatic speech is the sign that our brains have processed enough gestalts to understand whole language and to express it means that we don’t have any other co-occurring disabilities like dyspraxia of speech or motor disinhibition, situational non-speaking issues, trauma, tongue tie or whatever other thing we may have going on.
The goal shouldn’t be to get to an ableist “stage 6”. The goal should be to allow the child to develop naturally (with supports if needed), to learn about their own brain and accommodate that way of processing through adapted education and learning.
The 6 stages are just a neuronormative assumption of what’s going on – it doesn’t take in AT ALL – what is happening for years before these 6 stages. It took me until about 8 years old to show stage 6 outwardly. But I had reached gestalt full understanding in my brain from birth, because it’s just a different way of processing information – it doesn’t mean no processing, or late processing – just different processing.
In order to come up with these “6 stages”, NT’s had to stare at autistics for a few years, write down what they “saw” and then produce a list of stages based on what they saw….. they did NOT ask us what we experienced, felt, saw, thought etc. And there’s the important part. When we watch – we are using behaviourism. We are analysing only what is surface deep…. What can be seen from another person’s perspective. This is why I actually found the stages to be wrong – they do not align with being gestalt from the inner self – from lived experience.
All the behaviourists of the past have been debunked or their work has been shoved aside, because we found that behaviourism is shallow, meaningless and causes harm. It only ever ‘guesses’ what’s going on. The guess might be a good one, or informed by a good education on the topic, but it’s still only above skin deep – it doesn’t even penetrate the skin. You cannot know how someone processes something – unless you ARE them – or unless you ASK them. GLP stages were made, developed and used in training, without asking us. And that’s the problem. Nothing for us, without us.
I’ve written about being a GLP a lot. You can check out my other blogs and books on my website www.mckayandmckay.com and podcasts on “The Autistic Culture Podcast Network” if you’d like to know more.
In the opinion of NT’s – stage one is basically simplified gestalts… ‘echolalia’. Where the child is repeating “bits” of language that they’ve heard/seen or signed a lot. BTW: gestalts can be in sign language, in gestures, in playing with favoured things, in ‘babbling’ on an AAC etc. This is called the first stage because it’s the first one that NT’s see or experience about us from the outside. They “SEE” language from the autistic person. If they don’t see it – it doesn’t exist. This is where presuming competence comes in.
Many adults assume many things about autistic or non-speaking people, one of those things is that “if there is no outward ‘verbal’ language (mouth words) there’s nothing going on inside the person”. That’s so F’d UP!!!! But that’s where the idea of these ‘stages’ developed. In the assumption that their first ‘thought’ or ‘process’ is what is outwardly ‘spoken’. Your first thoughts may have been through outward hearable speech – but it’s not for everyone. There are many disabled people with complex disabilities that do not use speech to communicate, and that’s OK. Being GLP can cause a speech delay in some people, and that’s OK too. It doesn’t always cause a speech delay either. In some it can cause hyperverbal responses, or hyperlexia etc.
If a GLP is speech delayed, I usually try to ascertain if something else is going on. Eg: does the child have APD, are they being exposed to enough gestalts, do they have co-occurring dyspraxia, have they experienced trauma, an injury or illness, or medical condition (that may block/affect the ears, throat, mouth) or something else.
When I was a child, none of this stuff was known or talked about. My parents and doctors assumed I was “extremely shy”, and that I’d grow out of it. They were sort of right???? I grew INTO it! And I wasn’t shy – I was traumatised and ignored and lots of other stuff like having a hearing problem as well as APD – but I was a GLP and was still growing into all the gestalts I was learning, memorising and processing internally – until I could express them outwardly – that (according to my mother) took till I was about 8 – when ableist “stage 6” finally was ‘visible’ to those around me.
NOTE: I skipped many of those ‘stages’ as well. So did my youngest child. He went from the ableist term “non-verbal” (we prefer non-speaking) to not being able to shut him the hell up. I’m serious here and not exaggerating at all…. We truly can’t shut him up now. He’s also ADHD – so that hyperfocus mixed with monotropism/ injected with hyperactivity causes his mouth to run at a speed, volume and capacity that beggar’s belief some days. I become so overstimulated I need to walk away and hide.
But that’s what GLP is – it’s monotropism in a Bottom-Up processing brain. Look at the explanation by Autistic PhD (Erica Sanborne) for more on this. But basically – we are already mono-thinking. We hyperfocus on something to the nth degree and then break it down; the bottom-up processing.
It sometimes takes years to process all the information in the world and then break it down into speech.
Remember: We learn whole language first, through gestalts. We learn whole paragraphs, whole sentences, then whole words, then sounds (phonics) then we build it into speech. Typical processors are top-down… they learn it gradually, which means they learn speech quickly – but learn all the other stuff more slowly that GLP’s. By the time GLP’s explode with speech – we’ve already learnt all the information that typicals take years of schooling to gain…. We (GLP’s) learn backwards. A typical learns sounds and forms them into words – then into sentences, then paragraphs… then meaning. GLP’s start with meaning and work back to sounds.
It may seem complicated or weird or whatever, to a typical brain, but to GLP’s it’s natural – and top-down seems super slow, meaningless and too damned hard. (Or at least I do).
When teaching, I love to start with the meaning of the word – then hear it, see it, then sound it out and spell it. NT’s tend to sound it out, spell it, see the whole thing, and then give the meaning. Or let’s take it another way.
Let’s take fishing as an example. For an NT kid, you can say something like “we’re going fishing” and they’ll go with you without needing or wanting to know what “fishing” is, as they gain meaning through top down methods – learning each micro bit of information and piecing it together to get to a whole meaning.
An NT child can wait until they arrive at the fishing spot to learn what’s going on. Once they’ve arrived, they need to know what is needed, what are all the different things, and how to put the bait on the hook and put it in the water. For a GLP – if you say the same “we’re going fishing” – you will need to explain what is fishing: what’s involved what the outcome will be and how it will occur, where it is etc before they’ll even get in the car. They need all the information before beginning, so they can process all the information before breaking it down to smaller steps. Some who have experienced trauma will need the details to feel safe as well (but that’s a separate issue). You will need to explain it backwards.
It's also why, for GLP’s and many autistics – you need to explain the why of the “no” before you say the no. If you say the NO first – without the explanation – they can’t process it – it becomes an unreasonable and unprocessable thing. “No” doesn’t mean “no” to a GLP. “No” has to mean a WHOLE concept and reason…eg: for NT’s you can say no – then the explanation, because they process it in that order. For GLP’s we process it backwards… and giving a no before the context and explanation is putting the cart before the horse. For a GLP a “NO” is an incomplete thought/opinion, it’s like an incomplete gestalt.
When we learn “no” as babies….. NT’s learn “no” means stop – so they stop. And they don’t need the explanation for why it’s a “no” until toddlerhood. Think about all the toddlers you know who begin to say “but why” from a certain age. GLP’s ask in their minds ‘but why?’ before understanding that “no” means stop. NT’s learn to stop before asking why, GLP’s learn to think ‘why’ before learning to stop.
For GLP’s – we learn NO as part of a bigger concept and bigger understanding. We learn the words “know” and “no” in a full sentence and gain meaning from the actions and modelling of the adult about what that shortened gestalt may mean from that modelling and explanation. This is why a GLP who has also been speech delayed skip the same NT “but why” toddler phase. Because they have already gained the why through lots of modelling, explanations etc. Or why kids who are GLP and do dangerous things- do those things… stop or no has not been explained in a gestalt way that means anything to them yet.
This is why parents can get frustrated with their autistic children. They use the same teaching methods that work for NT kids with their autistic kids, but don’t understand why the same “no” or “stop” doesn’t work. For GLPs context matters – for NT’s context doesn’t matter and isn’t needed. Their brains function and learn totally differently.
I hope this helped to explain GLP a bit more – and why understanding how GLP’s think, process and do things matters more than knowing the ‘stages’ of GLP. GLP’s don’t stop processing and learning in a Gestalt manner once ableist mouth words have been developed – so neither should you stop learning or listening to GLP’s and how they learn, think and do things.
If you are a teacher or therapist – please don’t take offence -but learn from this blog. It’s vitally important for GLP’s in your care and tutelage to have you be totally knowledgeable and understanding about their needs and learning. If you don’t understand how GLP’s learn/think/process – you can fall into the trap of thinking that teaching something from basics to whole learning will work for all students/clients… it DOESN’T!