I keep trying to engage them — but nothing is working
- Staci Neustadt
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
You've tried everything.
You brought in their favorite topic. You changed the activity. You adjusted your approach, your tone, your timing. You've read the books, attended the trainings, and genuinely care about getting this right.
And still — they seem somewhere else entirely. Disengaged. Unreachable. Like nothing you do is landing.
Before you question your skills, your patience, or your instincts — consider this: the problem may not be engagement at all. It may be the framework you're using to understand what engagement even looks like for an autistic individual.
"It's like each day is either okay or just absolutely terrible. I feel like I'm chasing them around. I am maybe at a breaking point." — A therapist in our Making Sense of Autism community
That message is one we hear often. Not from people who don't care — but from people who care deeply and are completely exhausted. If that sounds familiar, keep reading.
The missing piece isn't effort. It's understanding.
When professionals, parents, and educators feel stuck with an autistic individual, the instinct is usually to try harder — more structure, more incentives, a new behavior plan, a different reward system.
But when we only focus on what we see on the surface — the behaviors, the shutdowns, the refusals — we miss the communication underneath. We miss what the autistic individual is actually trying to tell us.
Autistic individuals communicate exactly what they need. Bluntly, directly, and honestly — through words when they can, and through actions when they can't. The child who sits down in front of the computer has just said "I want computer" even if they didn't say it with their mouth. The student who melts down when a routine changes has just said "this transition is too much right now." The client who goes quiet mid-session is telling you something too.
The question isn't whether they're communicating. It's whether we're listening.
Why "not interested" is rarely the whole story
Here's something that shifts everything once you understand it: the autistic brain often uses the conscious, thinking part of the brain to process things that happen automatically and effortlessly for neurotypical individuals.
Think about it this way: when a neurotypical person decides they're hungry, they don't think about standing up, walking to the kitchen, opening the fridge. It just happens. For many autistic individuals, each of those steps requires conscious mental effort. Multiply that across an entire day — across every interaction, every demand, every sensory input — and you start to understand why cognitive fatigue is real, and why engagement can look wildly different from one day to the next.
This is also why consistency is one of the most misunderstood things about autism. "You did it yesterday — why can't you do it today?" feels like a reasonable question. But the neural connections that made something possible yesterday aren't guaranteed to be available today. That's not defiance. That's neurology.
So what does the right support actually look like?
It starts with understanding — not fixing. It means sitting back, observing, and getting genuinely curious about how this individual communicates, processes, and engages before deciding what they need from you.
It means accepting all communication, not just the kind that looks the way we expect. It means saying "I hear you — and let's find a way that works for both of us" instead of pushing harder toward compliance.
And it means having a real framework for how the autistic brain works — not just a list of strategies, but a genuine inside-out understanding that changes how you see everything.
That's exactly what this week's conversation is about.
Susan Golubock— retired occupational therapist and late-diagnosed autistic individual — sits down to share what she wishes every parent, teacher, and therapist knew. It's honest, practical, and one of the most perspective-shifting conversations we've had.
In the video you'll discover:
Why inconsistency is neurological — not behavioral — and how to stop taking it personally
What cognitive fatigue actually feels like from the inside, and why it explains so much
How to recognize communication you've been misreading as non-compliance
The attention myth that's creating unnecessary conflict every single day
The one shift that moves you from chasing behaviors to actually connecting
You're not stuck because you're not good enough. You're stuck because you haven't had this framework yet.
*in the description below the video
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