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9 %u00a9 Elklan Training Limited 2025Elklan Supporting Gestalt Language Processing %u2013 a Total Communication Approach%u2022 Positive engagement using their area of interest%u2022 Joining groups with shared interests%u2022 Awareness and self-support for emotional well-being%u2022 Technology%u2022 Strength based and led%u2022 Social Stories (Gray, 2000)Double EmpathySuccessful interaction between an autistic and non-autistic person requires mutual empathy. Double Empathy is where both partners try to understand and accommodate the thoughts, feelings, and behaviour in each other and there needs to be a reciprocal understanding that each person has differences in communication. Milton (2012) first proposed the idea that not having Double Empathy creates the Double Empathy Problem. Milton et al (2022) reviewed changes in the perception of Double Empathy and concluded %u2018The concept of the Double Empathy Problem has the potential to aid a reframing of autism itself from a social communication disorder to a description of a broad range of developmental differences.%u2019Double EmpathyThe autistic person... The non-autistic person...may prefer to talk about topics of personal interestmay not understand how important certain interests are to others and may be %u2018dismissive%u2019, ignore or might insist that certain topics are discussed insteadmay not understand the implied and nonliteral meaningmay not realise how much non-literal language they use and so can%u2019t adapt their language accordinglymay not interpret the non-verbal cues to help them understand what is saidmay not understand why their message is difficult to understandmay not look at the speaker or use nonverbal cues to indicate interest in the conversationmay interpret not looking at or use of non-verbal cues to indicate interest as not listeningDifferences in the Development of CommunicationA child following different developmental pathways for attention, play and speech and language is likely to benefit from a neurodiverse-friendly approach. This includes recognising and understanding a different language development pathway, namely Gestalt Language Processing (see Chapter 2).The communication divide