One of the greatest challenges for an autistic teenager is communicating their needs to the various people around them. How do you express that you’re experiencing sensory overload? How do you explain that you need a break? How do you make your autistic functioning understood without having to explain everything every time?
The Importance of Communicating One’s Needs
An autistic teenager who knows how to communicate their needs is a teenager who can obtain necessary accommodations, prevent crisis situations, develop more satisfying relationships, and build their autonomy.
Conversely, a teenager who cannot communicate their needs remains dependent on others’ intuitive understanding (often insufficient), endures situations that could have been avoided, and risks isolation or conflicts.
Developing this communication skill is an investment for the teenager’s entire life.
Obstacles to Communicating Needs
Several obstacles can make communicating needs difficult for an autistic teenager.
Difficulty Identifying One’s Own Needs
Before communicating a need, you must have identified it. However, difficulties with interoception and alexithymia, which are common in autistic people, can make this identification difficult. The teenager may sense that something is wrong without knowing precisely what they need.
Difficulty Finding the Words
Even when the need is identified, finding the words to express it can be a challenge. Emotional and relational language is not always easily accessible, especially in stressful moments.
Fear of Judgment
The teenager may fear being judged, appearing “weird,” weak, or difficult. This fear can lead them to remain silent about their needs rather than risk rejection.
Explanation Fatigue
Having to explain their autistic functioning to each new person, over and over again, is exhausting. The teenager may eventually give up on communicating rather than having to explain everything again.
Difficulty Interrupting or Asserting Oneself
In a class, group conversation, or family meeting, the teenager may have trouble finding the appropriate moment to express a need or to allow themselves to do so.
Different Interlocutors and Their Specificities
Communicating needs must be adapted to the interlocutor.
Communicating with Parents
With parents, the level of familiarity is generally high. The teenager can (ideally) be more direct and less filtered. Parents can learn to recognize non-verbal signals.
The main challenge is often maintaining open communication at an age when teenagers naturally tend to distance themselves from their parents. Creating regular, non-confrontational exchange moments can help.
Communicating with Teachers
With teachers, communication must be more formal. The teenager generally doesn’t have the time or context for lengthy explanations.
Tools prepared in advance (exit card, agreed-upon signal, accommodations formalized in the IEP/504 plan) allow essential needs to be communicated without having to explain everything each time.
Communicating with Peers
With friends, the challenge is finding a balance between authenticity and protection. The teenager can choose to talk about their autism with certain close friends, or simply express their preferences without explaining them through autism.
With less close classmates, socially acceptable formulations allow needs to be expressed without exposing oneself: “I need to get some fresh air,” “I’m tired,” “I have a headache.”
Communicating with Professionals
With healthcare professionals, educators, or other support staff, more technical communication is possible and often welcome. The teenager can use precise autism vocabulary: sensory overload, proprioceptive need, alexithymia.
Tools to Facilitate Communication
Different tools can facilitate communicating needs.
Communication Cards
Cards prepared in advance can be shown rather than having to verbalize. A “I need a break” card, a card with a color code (green/orange/red) to indicate overload level, an “I can’t speak right now” card.
These cards are particularly useful in stressful moments when speech becomes difficult.
Prepared Scripts
Phrases or formulations prepared in advance for different situations allow communication without having to improvise under stress.
For example: “I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed, I’m going to take five minutes outside” or “Could we lower the lights? It’s difficult for me.”
Written Supports
Some teenagers express themselves better in writing than orally. Text messages, written notes, emails can be used to communicate important needs.
A written document explaining the teenager’s functioning can be shared with teachers at the beginning of the year, avoiding having to re-explain everything orally.
Non-Verbal Signals
Signals agreed upon with loved ones allow discreet communication. A gesture, a code word, a text message can indicate “I need to leave,” “I need help,” “I’m overloaded.”
Visual Supports
Images, pictograms, visual scales can help communicate states that are difficult to verbalize. A scale from 1 to 10 for stress level, images of different emotions or sensations.
Developing Self-Advocacy Skills
Self-advocacy is the ability to defend one’s own rights and communicate one’s needs effectively. This skill develops progressively.
Starting with Self-Knowledge
Before communicating needs to others, the teenager must know them themselves. Self-observation, reflection on their functioning, identification of what helps and what harms are the first steps.
Practicing in Safe Contexts
Communicating needs can first be practiced in safe contexts (with parents, with a trusted professional) before being extended to more difficult contexts.
Using Role-Play
Playing out scenarios allows practicing formulations, anticipating possible reactions, and developing confidence.
Learning from Experience
After each situation where the teenager has (or hasn’t) communicated a need, reviewing what worked or didn’t helps refine strategies.
Accepting the Right to Have Needs
An often underestimated obstacle is the teenager’s conviction that they don’t have the right to have different needs or to express them. Working on this self-acceptance is fundamental to self-advocacy.
Formulations That Work
Certain types of formulations are generally more effective than others.
Being Concrete and Specific
“I need to sit near the window” is more actionable than “The class stresses me out.”
Using “I” Statements
“I need to…” is less likely to provoke a defensive reaction than “You should…” or “It’s too…”
Proposing Solutions
“Could I step out for a few minutes when the noise becomes too loud?” is easier to accept than a simple complaint.
Explaining Without Over-Explaining
Giving a brief explanation can help understanding, but lengthy justifications are not necessary. “The cafeteria noise is difficult for me, could I eat in a quieter place?” is sufficient.
Accepting “No” While Persisting
Sometimes a first request is refused. The teenager can accept this refusal while looking for other ways to obtain what they need, or by reformulating their request differently.
The Role of Parents in Developing This Skill
Parents play a crucial role in developing their teenager’s ability to communicate their needs.
Modeling Communication
Show your teenager how you communicate your own needs. Verbalize your process: “I’m feeling tired, I’m going to sit down for a moment.”
Creating an Environment Where Expressing Needs Is Valued
Respond positively when your teenager expresses a need, even if you can’t always meet it. The act of expressing the need is already a success to be valued.
Helping to Identify and Name Needs
Help your teenager put words to what they’re experiencing: “It looks like you’re tired. Would you need a break?”
Accompanying the First Difficult Communications
The first few times your teenager must communicate a need to a teacher or another adult, you can accompany them, then gradually let them do it alone.
Resisting the Temptation to Do It for Them
It’s faster to request the accommodation for your teenager yourself. But each time you do, you deprive them of an opportunity to develop their own skill.
Training to Develop These Skills
Supporting your teenager in developing their ability to communicate their needs requires specific tools and strategies.
The training Managing the Emotions of an Autistic Teenager offered by DYNSEO guides you in supporting your teenager toward greater autonomy and self-advocacy.
The training Autism: Managing Difficult Situations in Daily Life helps you understand situations where communicating needs is particularly difficult and develop strategies to overcome them.
Tools to Support Communication
Adapted tools can facilitate communicating needs.
MY DICTIONARY is the ideal tool for creating personalized communication supports: needs cards, visual scales, illustrated scripts. Developed with speech therapists, it allows creating a visual vocabulary adapted to the teenager’s specific needs.
Conclusion
The ability to communicate one’s needs is a fundamental skill that allows an autistic teenager to navigate the world with more autonomy and less suffering. This skill develops progressively, with practice and support.
Your role as a parent is to support this development: by creating an environment where expressing needs is valued, by helping to identify and name needs, by providing communication tools, and by accompanying the first difficult experiences.
A teenager who knows how to communicate their needs is a teenager who builds the foundation for their adult autonomy. It’s an investment for their entire life.
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This article is part of a series dedicated to supporting autistic teenagers in managing their emotions. Find the other articles on the DYNSEO blog to explore each topic in depth.