For Parents of Autistic Children
Understanding What to Address First
Why This Matters
This is a lot to take in, and Kimberly has lived it.
Families are often trying to make decisions within a system that does not provide clear answers or a consistent protocol, which can make it difficult to know where to begin.
A helpful starting point is recognizing that autism and the traits that often occur alongside it come from the same underlying processes, but affect different systems in the body. Because of that, they do not always respond to the same type of support.
Separating these into two categories can make things more clear and more manageable.
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.
Both behavior and skill development can be challenging. Autism is a neurodevelopmental condition, which means neural development can occur differently.
Every skill and every behavior is supported by neural circuits. These circuits are the pathways in the brain that store the information for how to do something, including how to act, respond, and regulate.
When these circuits develop differently, a skill or behavior may be harder to access, less consistent, or not show up in the way it is expected.
Because these circuits develop through neuroplasticity, they can continue to be built and strengthened over time with the right type of 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 things like sleep, digestion, immune responses, energy levels, and overall physical regulation.
These traits directly affect sleep, digestion, immune responses, and overall regulation, shaping how a child functions and develops over time.
These traits are driven by how the body’s regulatory systems are functioning.
These systems include: immune system, metabolism, cellular repair, nervous system regulation, and genetic regulation.
Genetic and epigenetic factors influence how these systems are set and how they respond over time. In neurodivergent children, this can lead to patterns where certain systems remain more activated or harder to bring back into balance.
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 (OAT) 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.
Looking at both can help create a clearer picture of what a child may need and why different supports may have different outcomes.
When these are not separated, the wrong approach can be applied to the wrong problem.
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 is not just about behavior. It is about whether the underlying neural pathways for a skill are built, reinforced, and accessible.
When a child struggles with speech, food, behavior, or learning, it often means the pathway for that skill needs more support.
NeuroToggle® focuses on building the pathway first, not just reacting to the outcome.
The Four Processes
Create the connection for a skill or behavior.
Reinforce the connection through repetition and feedback.
Support coordination, retention, and sequencing through timing and repeated activation.
Help the skill carry across situations and grow over time.
Every example in the next section follows this structure.
NeuroToggle® Foundations
Reframes development through neuroplasticity and explains why skills and behaviors cannot show up reliably if the circuitry behind them is not being built directly.
Start with Book 1
The NeuroToggle® Framework
Formalizes NeuroToggle® into a neuroplasticity-based instructional framework built around building, strengthening, timing, and expanding neural connections.
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.
Target the smaller skills involved in speech, such as joint attention, imitation, facial movements, breath-based activities, gestures, and sound attempts.
Use repeated, targeted learning experiences to reinforce these pathways so the signals involved in speech become more reliable over time.
Support speech during critical and sensitive developmental windows, and use consistent repetition so the circuitry for communication is activated again and again.
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.
Start with the smaller pieces of the skill, such as looking at, tolerating, touching, smelling, or interacting with a new food.
Use repeated exposure to the same food experiences so those pathways become more familiar and less effortful.
Keep exposures consistent over time rather than pushing too much at once. Repetition matters more than intensity.
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.
Start with shared attention, simple exchanges, imitation, and predictable turn-taking rather than expecting full conversation at once.
Practice short back-and-forth exchanges repeatedly in meaningful routines so the response pathways become easier to access.
Use conversation opportunities consistently and support the timing of responses so the child can coordinate receiving, processing, and producing communication.
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.
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.
Reinforce the replacement behavior immediately and consistently so it becomes easier to access than the original reaction.
Introduce the replacement early, before frustration fully escalates. Regulation and communication supports work best before the child is overwhelmed.
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.
Break the skill into smaller parts and identify the earliest step the child can access, such as noticing, watching, or attempting.
Use repeated practice and structured experiences to reinforce the pathway until the skill becomes more reliable.
Follow a developmental sequence along critical time periods and use consistent repetition and spacing over time to improve the development and retention the skill.
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 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 MechanismsCommunication 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 SpeechInterventions 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 ConsiderationsThe Communication Methods section outlines concerns with approaches such as Spelling to Communicate (S2C), including the lack of foundational instruction in spelling prior to implementation, which raises questions about how independent communication is established.
Additional concerns include the limited ability to convey expression, tone, and intent, as well as the inability to verify independent authorship, meaning it is not possible to confirm whether responses are generated by the individual or influenced by the facilitator.
This is further complicated by the ideomotor effect, where subtle, unconscious movements can impact letter selection without intentional control.
When accommodation is appropriate, augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) is the empirically supported approach. If help is needed selecting a system, search for AAC evaluations near you.
Review Communication Method ConsiderationsThere 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.