When an Autistic Child Does Not Look or Listen: How to Build Attention Before Demanding Language
When an Autistic Child Does Not Look or Listen: How to Build Attention Before Demanding Language
When parents say, “My child does not look at me and does not listen to what I say,” the immediate temptation is to repeatedly call the child’s name, demand eye contact, or increase the volume of instructions. But effective communication development requires a more fundamental question:
Has the child actually become available for the information being presented?
Dr. Santosh Kondekar emphasizes a developmental sequence:
“Do not chase the child’s eyes. Build the child’s attention.”
And, in the framework proposed by Dr. Kondekar:
“Input → Awareness → Attention → Recognition → Meaning → Cognition → Communication.”
This sequence places listening and meaningful attention before expecting sophisticated expressive language.
Importantly, looking directly at a communication partner is not synonymous with listening. Some autistic children may attend to spoken information without sustained eye contact. The clinical target should therefore be functional attention and shared engagement, not forced eye contact. Contemporary autism guidance also recognizes joint attention and social communication as important developmental targets.
Dr. Kondekar says: “First make the child notice you; then make the information meaningful.”
A child who is deeply absorbed in repetitive play may not be ready to process a long instruction. Calling the child's name ten times may simply teach the child that the first nine calls can be ignored.
Instead:
Name → pause → meaningful input → pause → response.
For example:
“Rohan…”
Pause.
“Look, the car is coming.”
Then allow time for the child to process.
Dr. Kondekar advises:
“Do not fill every second with words. Speak, pause and allow the child’s brain to respond.”
Naturalistic communication approaches similarly emphasize following the child's interests, modelling language relevant to the child's current focus, responding to communication attempts and allowing conversational turns.
10 tricks for high-quality language input with attention
1. Talk about what the child is already attending to
If the child is watching a car, talk about the car.
Instead of:
“What is this? What colour is it? Say car. What is the car doing?”
Try:
“Red car.”
“Car is going.”
“Fast car!”
“Car stopped.”
This creates language linked to attention.
Dr. Kondekar advises:
“Do not compete with the child’s attention. Join it and put language into it.”
Naturalistic intervention literature similarly describes modelling language that is relevant to the child's focus of attention.
2. Use fewer questions and more meaningful commentary
A therapy session dominated by questions can turn communication into an examination.
Instead of constantly asking:
“What is this?”
“Where is the ball?”
“What colour?”
“What are you doing?”
provide commentary:
“The ball is rolling.”
“Papa opened the door.”
“Dog is sleeping.”
“Now the car is going under the table.”
Dr. Kondekar says:
“Language input should not always demand an answer.”
The child needs to experience language as something that describes the world, not merely something that adults use to test him.
Reducing unnecessary questions and increasing responsive comments is also described in naturalistic communication strategies.
3. Use the child's name once—not repeatedly
Repeated:
“Aarav! Aarav! Aarav! Listen! Aarav!”
can become background noise.
Instead:
“Aarav…”
Pause.
Then give meaningful information.
If there is no response, change the context rather than simply increasing the volume.
Dr. Kondekar insists:
“Attention cannot be shouted into existence.”
4. Create a reason to listen
Good language input should sometimes contain anticipation.
For example:
“Ready… set…”
Pause.
The child waits.
“GO!”
Or:
“The door is going to…”
Pause.
“OPEN!”
The pause creates an opportunity for the child to anticipate what comes next.
This can gradually develop auditory attention, anticipation and turn-taking.
5. Use short language, but not permanently simplistic language
For an emerging communicator:
“Ball.”
“Big ball.”
“Ball is falling.”
“The big ball fell down.”
The language can expand as comprehension develops.
Dr. Kondekar advises:
“Make the input simple enough to understand, but rich enough to develop thinking.”
The objective is not merely vocabulary accumulation. It is progressively connecting words with objects, actions, relationships, events and meaning.
6. Use parallel talk
Parallel talk means describing what the child is doing without continuously directing the child.
Child pushes a car.
Parent:
“Car going.”
“Car goes fast.”
“Oh! Car hit the wall.”
“Car stopped.”
This keeps language connected to the child's immediate experience.
The adult becomes a language narrator, rather than a taskmaster.
7. Use expansions
If the child says:
“Car.”
Adult:
“Yes, red car.”
If the child says:
“Dog.”
Adult:
“Dog is running.”
If the child says:
“Mama water.”
Adult:
“Mama is drinking water.”
This provides a slightly more advanced language model without requiring the child to repeat it immediately.
8. Use stories instead of isolated commands
Dr. Kondekar strongly emphasizes moving beyond isolated words and commands toward narrative understanding.
Instead of teaching:
“Sit.”
“Stand.”
“Come.”
“Give.”
build connected language:
“Rahul came home.
He removed his shoes.
Mama gave him water.
Rahul drank the water.
Then he sat near Papa.”
Stories provide relationships between events.
They introduce:
who → what → where → when → why → what happened next.
This is particularly important if the ultimate goal is not merely compliance but thinking, imagination, conversation and social understanding.
9. Make listening social
Language should come from another human being—not only from videos, recorded rhymes or electronic devices.
Dr. Kondekar says:
“Language is not only sound entering the ears. Language is meaning shared between people.”
Use:
face-to-face play → shared activity → commentary → anticipation → response → turn-taking.
Joint attention involves sharing an object or event with another person and forms an important foundation for social communication.
10. Give the child something worth listening to
Perhaps the most important trick is to make your speech interesting and meaningful.
Instead of:
“Listen to me.”
give the child something to listen for.
A surprising event:
“Oh! The balloon…”
Pause.
“POPPED!”
A story:
“The monkey went into the…”
Pause.
“HOUSE!”
A shared experience:
“Look! Papa is…”
Pause.
“COMING!”
The objective is to create a child who gradually learns:
“When another person speaks, something meaningful may happen.”
That is fundamentally different from:
“When an adult speaks, I am being given another command.”
Dr. Kondekar's attention-to-language principle
A useful hierarchy is:
NOTICE
↓
ORIENT
↓
LISTEN
↓
ATTEND
↓
RECOGNIZE
↓
UNDERSTAND
↓
THINK
↓
COMMUNICATE
Dr. Kondekar advises:
“Do not measure listening only by eye contact. Measure whether the child is receiving, understanding and using the information.”
This distinction is important clinically. Joint attention includes more than simply looking at another person's face; it involves coordinating attention between people, objects and events.
From command-following to conversational thinking
The ultimate objective of language intervention should not be a child who merely responds correctly to dozens of adult commands.
It should be a child who gradually learns:
“I notice what you are saying.”
“I understand what happened.”
“I know what you mean.”
“I have something to say.”
“I can tell you what I think.”
“I can listen to your story.”
“I can tell you my story.”
Dr. Kondekar insists:
“We should not stop at teaching the autistic child to follow instructions. We must give the child language with which to understand life.”
Evidence supports the importance of naturalistic, socially embedded communication approaches, including opportunities for joint attention, turn-taking and functional communication. The evidence is not uniform across every intervention or every child, so intervention should remain individualized and outcome-based.
The final message for parents
Don't chase eye contact.
Don't bombard with questions.
Don't repeat the child's name endlessly.
Don't turn every interaction into an instruction.
Instead:
Capture attention → share an experience → provide meaningful language → pause → allow response → expand the meaning → repeat throughout daily life.
Dr. Kondekar's central message can therefore be expressed as:
“First teach the child to notice the world with you. Then give that shared world a language.”
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