One of the communication techniques I managed to work out by observing my diagnostician, is asking questions in form of, what I call, ‘statement with a void’. This one is very good for helping us make a choice.

Let’s say you want to find out how the autistic person in your life would like to spend free time with you (obviously that’s simplification, I’m sure you have much more serious problems with us).

You should give the autistic person two options, but using very general language, without words ‘me, us, we’.It could look like this:

1. It’s possible to go to such and such place.

2. Doing such and such activity would also be interesting.

3. It would be good to do something nice together.

In the above 1 and 2 are the options that we’re being given, and 3 is the statement with the void, where ‘something nice’ is the void.

The technique works especially well in emails, and both me and my boyfriend love when someone communicates with us this way! Try it for yourself.