Autism is primarily a disorder of communication. Children with autism struggle with the spectrum of communication that includes actual expressive language to the subtleties of non verbal language. They may not understand mom or dad's angry look, or the frustration of siblings or peers. Which is why we spend lots and lots of time working with them on how to communicate.
Yet despite this obvious trait of kids on the spectrum, so many of us - parents as well as professionals - spend agonizing amounts of time trying to teach them certain life lessons with - language - their weakest suit! You can certainly ask: "If they need to learn language, that's how we have to communicate - what else are we supposed to do?" And there is something to that question. But I also think that we miss something when we spend lots and lots of time "talking" with them. In my experience, many kids with communication issues just tune out, despite their best efforts to actively communicate. It's a weak suit and when we spend too much time playing to that WE get frustrated that they don't keep up, even though it's likely that they can't keep up.
So we have a dilemma. Do we stop verbal communication with them? Certainly not. What am I advising, then? What I think we need to do as professionals is be cautious of parents who come to us wanting "talk therapy" with their kids who are on the spectrum or who have other communication obstacles such as those posed by some cognitive delays. How much can the child benefit from talk therapy? We need to be cautious of feeding in to parent hopes that this time, this therapist will finally be able to "get through" to him/her when that is sometimes an unrealistic goal.
What do I recommend to parents? Remember that your child's disability is first and foremost communication based. Mixing your communication with him/her with your anger, yelling or shaming is only going to confuse your child. (I think there's a place for anger and shame in parent - child relationships, but that's another discussion for another time. Yelling - not so much.) Avoid sounding like the teacher in the Charlie Brown cartoons - a "wa wa" sound that is never intelligible. If you've asked your child to do something, repeating it numerous times will only teach him/her that the first time doesn't matter (true for kids with special needs or not, btw.) Enforcing compliance does not happen by endless chattering.
Sometimes less (communication/repetition/harping) is more.
