For Parents of Autistic Children
The Importance of Separating Autism and Comorbid Traits
Why Autism and the Comorbidities?
Separating these into two categories can make things more clear and more manageable. It helps families think about skills and behaviors differently from body system regulation.
Why This Matters
This is a lot to take in, and Kimberly has lived it.
What Families Are Facing
Many families are making important decisions in a system that does not provide clear answers or a consistent starting point.
What Helps First
A useful starting point is understanding that autism traits and comorbid traits come from related underlying processes, but affect different systems.
Why That Matters
Because they affect different systems, they do not always respond to the same type of support.
Starting Point
Separating them into two categories can make the situation more clear and more manageable.
The goal is not to split the child into parts. The goal is to better understand what type of support matches which type of problem.
Autism Traits
Autism traits are related to skills such as speech, motor planning, learning, and communication, and behaviors such as regulation, emotional responses, and how a child reacts in different situations.
What They Involve
Skills and behaviors, including communication, motor planning, learning, regulation, and emotional response.
What Is Underneath
Every skill and every behavior is supported by neural circuits, which store how to do something, respond, and regulate.
What It Can Look Like
When these circuits develop differently, a skill or behavior may be harder to access, less consistent, or may not appear in the expected way.
What Support Targets
Because these circuits develop through neuroplasticity, they can continue to be built and strengthened over time with structured support.
NeuroToggle focuses on building, strengthening, timing, and expanding these circuits.
Because these traits are related to how skills and behaviors develop, support focuses on building and strengthening the underlying neural circuits over time. Structured approaches that consistently target how a skill is built, practiced, and reinforced can help improve access, consistency, and overall development.
Comorbid Traits
Comorbid traits are related to how the body is functioning. These can include sleep, digestion, immune responses, energy levels, and overall physical regulation.
What They Involve
Sleep, digestion, immune responses, energy levels, and overall physical regulation.
What Is Underneath
These traits are driven by the body’s regulatory systems, including immune system, metabolism, cellular repair, nervous system regulation, and genetic regulation.
Why They Can Persist
Genetic and epigenetic factors can influence how these systems are set and how hard they are to bring back into balance over time.
What Can Intensify Them
During situational triggers, such as illness or injury, the effects can compound as multiple systems are activated at the same time.
BioToggles focus on immune system, metabolism, cellular repair, nervous system regulation, and genetic regulation.
Because these traits are related to how the body is functioning, families may explore additional ways to better understand underlying patterns. Some parents have found it helpful to use organic acids testing with qualified providers to gain insight into metabolic and biochemical function.
What This Means
This often means there are two different areas to consider: skills and behaviors, and body system regulation.
Why Look at Both
Looking at both can help create a clearer picture of what a child may need and why different supports may have different outcomes.
Why Separation Helps
Support becomes more targeted when families know whether they are addressing a developmental skill issue or a body system regulation issue.
What Can Go Wrong
When these are not separated, the wrong approach can be applied to the wrong problem.
Better Use of Support
Separating these categories can help families make decisions with more clarity, focus, and purpose.
The point is not to make things more complicated. It is to make support more accurate.
A framework for understanding how skills and behaviors are built
NeuroToggle® is based on the idea that every skill and behavior is supported by neural connections. When those connections are not built or not strong enough, a skill may be hard to access, inconsistent, or not show up at all.
What This Means
Development depends on whether the neural pathway for a skill is built and accessible.
When a child struggles with speech, behavior, or learning, the pathway for that skill likely needs targeted support.
NeuroToggle® focuses on building the pathway first.
The Four Processes
Create the connection.
Reinforce through repetition.
Coordinate and retain.
Generalize across situations.
All examples follow this structure.
View the full NeuroToggle® framework
See the full breakdown of how NeuroToggle® builds and refines neural connections across development.
NeuroToggle® Foundations
Introduces the concept of building neural pathways for skills and behaviors.
Start with Book 1
The NeuroToggle® Framework
Formalizes the full instructional model and application.
Continue with Book 2Building Skills and Behaviors at Home with NeuroToggle®
If your child is not speaking or has limited speech
Speech is not just about knowing words. It depends on sensory pathways, processing pathways, motor pathways, breathing, facial movement, and coordination working together.
Build
Target the smaller skills involved in speech, such as joint attention, imitation, facial movements, breath-based activities, gestures, and sound attempts.
Strengthen
Use repeated, targeted learning experiences to reinforce these pathways so the signals involved in speech become more reliable over time.
Time
Support speech during critical and sensitive developmental windows, and use consistent repetition so the circuitry for communication is activated again and again.
Expand
Pair physical speech-related activities with language and interaction so motor, sensory, and language circuits begin working together more flexibly.
In the parent PDF, speech support was approached in sequence: joint attention first, then mirroring, then independent initiation, while pairing movement, facial work, breath-based toys, and language at the same time.
If your child eats a very limited range of foods
Food variety can be approached as a skill-building process. The goal is not to force immediate eating, but to build tolerance, familiarity, and flexibility step by step.
Build
Start with the smaller pieces of the skill, such as looking at, tolerating, touching, smelling, or interacting with a new food.
Strengthen
Use repeated exposure to the same food experiences so those pathways become more familiar and less effortful.
Time
Keep exposures consistent over time rather than pushing too much at once. Repetition matters more than intensity.
Expand
Move outward from accepted foods by linking to similar textures, temperatures, colors, or flavors so tolerance can generalize.
Think in layers. A child may need to tolerate a food before touching it, touch it before tasting it, and taste it before accepting it consistently.
If your child struggles with back-and-forth conversation
Conversation is a skill built from smaller skills. It depends on awareness, attention, processing, response timing, and repeated practice with another person.
Build
Start with shared attention, simple exchanges, imitation, and predictable turn-taking rather than expecting full conversation at once.
Strengthen
Practice short back-and-forth exchanges repeatedly in meaningful routines so the response pathways become easier to access.
Time
Use conversation opportunities consistently and support the timing of responses so the child can coordinate receiving, processing, and producing communication.
Expand
Grow from simple exchanges into longer responses, new topics, and more flexible conversation across settings and people.
Start smaller than you think. Shared attention and imitation often come before more spontaneous conversational exchange.
If your child has challenging behaviors
Some behaviors are responses to frustration, dysregulation, or difficulty performing the skills a situation requires. This is especially important when communication is limited and frustration builds.
Build
Teach a more functional behavior that serves the same need, such as requesting help, using a gesture, using AAC, asking for a break, or signaling discomfort.
Strengthen
Reinforce the replacement behavior immediately and consistently so it becomes easier to access than the original reaction.
Time
Introduce the replacement early, before frustration fully escalates. Regulation and communication supports work best before the child is overwhelmed.
Expand
Use the replacement behavior across routines, environments, and adults so it becomes more flexible and more likely to show up spontaneously.
If a child understands more than they can physically express, frustration may be tied to that gap. Build communication access first, not just behavior control.
If your child is learning a new skill
NeuroToggle® treats skills as neural circuitry that can be built through targeted experiences, not just exposure. Starting with the right instructional approach helps create the pathway for the skill before expecting it to show up consistently.
Build
Break the skill into smaller parts and identify the earliest step the child can access, such as noticing, watching, or attempting.
Strengthen
Use repeated practice and structured experiences to reinforce the pathway until the skill becomes more reliable.
Time
Follow a developmental sequence along critical time periods and use consistent repetition and spacing over time to improve the development and retention the skill.
Expand
Move from supported performance to more independent use, then apply the skill in new routines, settings, and combinations to build flexibility.
Use the NeuroToggle® pedagogy to build, strengthen, time, and expand the skill, so the pathway can be formed, reinforced, coordinated, and used across situations.
Understanding Nonverbality as an Autism Comorbidity
Nonverbality, the inability to produce speech sounds, is not the absence of understanding. It is a breakdown in the pathways required to produce speech.
Speech-Motor Pathways
Speech is produced through speech-motor pathways.
When a child is nonverbal, the issue is not whether these pathways exist, but which part of the pathway is not functioning as expected.
The challenge is that there is currently no clear protocol to identify which mechanism is affected in each individual nonverbal child.
Learn About Speech-Motor MechanismsFrom Silence to Speech
Communication can be built when the correct pathways are targeted.
The From Silence to Speech page documents how communication was developed in Kimberly Kitzerow’s nonverbal autistic daughter. Her inability to speak was not due to a lack of understanding. It was a physiological limitation in producing speech, specifically within speech-motor pathways.
Communication was developed by identifying and targeting those underlying mechanisms using structured, neuroplasticity-based strategies that built and strengthened the neural circuits required for speech.
There is currently no standardized diagnostic protocol to determine which specific mechanism is not functioning in each child. Because of this, there is no reliable way to know who will benefit from targeted intervention and who may require long-term accommodations.
View From Silence to SpeechFolinic Acid
Interventions such as folinic acid are being explored in relation to communication development.
It is important to understand both the potential applications and the limitations when evaluating these approaches.
The Folinic Acid Concerns page outlines biochemical and research-based concerns regarding the use of high-dose folinic acid as a treatment in autism, particularly in developing children. It explains that folinic acid is a formyl form of folate involved in DNA synthesis and cell turnover, not methylation, and that increasing its availability can drive cellular pathways in ways that may have unintended downstream effects, especially with long-term use.
The page also raises concerns about the research being used to support this approach, including a clinical trial that was placed on FDA full clinical hold for investigator non-compliance but later published, along with issues related to potential conflicts of interest and overstated interpretations of modest results.
Together, these concerns highlight the need for careful evaluation, transparency, and stronger standards before widely adopting this as a treatment approach.
Review Folinic Acid ConsiderationsCommunication Methods
Communication is an access issue, not a measure of intelligence. When speech is not reliable, alternative systems provide a way to express language and participate.
This section outlines communication options based on how language is accessed, including body-based, picture-based, and device-supported systems.
These approaches fall under augmentative and alternative communication (AAC), which supports consistent and independent communication.
Early access to a reliable system matters. An AAC evaluation can help determine the best fit.
Explore Communication OptionsAdvocacy
There is currently no standardized diagnostic protocol to determine which speech mechanisms are not functioning in nonverbal children.
This leaves families without clear direction for diagnosis, treatment, or appropriate accommodation.
Advocacy is needed to push for standardized identification, evaluation, and support.
How the theory, the framework, and the outcome actually relate
These are often interpreted as a single claim. They are not. They operate at different levels of biology and evidence and must be understood in relation to each other.
Kitzerow's theoretical model on the pathology of autism and the comorbidities is a species-conserved biochemical cascade that explains autism traits, comorbid traits, and the mechanisms behind why they cluster.
This is possible because of the method used to construct it. Kitzerow built a species-conserved biochemical network of gene-coded proteins and compared population-level autism biomarkers to that network to identify a consistent cascade.
NeuroToggle operates at a different level. It describes the species-conserved neurobiology of how all humans develop skills and behaviors. Neural circuits hold the information for how to perform skills, and those circuits are built through experience-driven neuroplasticity. Because of this, instruction can target those circuits with precision.
Kitzerow then used that framework to specifically target speech in her daughter. That application required full-time, high-intensity implementation over multiple years.
Because she cannot take months or years away from work to formally replicate that level of intervention in another child, and because no controlled research currently defines who this will or will not work for, that specific speech-targeted protocol is classified as anecdotal.
Autism & Comorbidities Theory
A species-conserved biochemical cascade derived from protein-level network construction and population-level autism biomarker comparison.
Explains autism traits, comorbid traits, and why they cluster through a shared underlying mechanism.
NeuroToggle
A species-conserved neurobiological framework describing how humans develop skills and behaviors through neural circuitry formation.
Neural circuits store how to perform skills. Neuroplasticity builds those circuits through experience, allowing targeted instructional strategies.
Speech Protocol (Anecdotal)
A specific application of NeuroToggle used to target speech in Kitzerow's daughter through sustained, full-time intervention.
Classified as anecdotal because it has not been formally replicated and has not currently been reproduced under controlled conditions due to financial constraints.
The structure is not ambiguous. The theory explains the biological cascade. NeuroToggle explains how skills are built. The speech outcome is a specific, unreplicated application of that framework.
View the Jigsaw Puzzle Methodology →