Today’s guest is Adina Levy. Adina is an AuDHDer, speech therapist, professional educator, and podcaster. She runs Play. Learn. Chat., and her podcast is called The Exploring Neurodiversity podcast. Adina loves intertwining her personal and clinical experiences with the lived experiences and perspectives of other neurodivergent people. She is dedicated to helping professionals and families to better understand the unique interests, individual strengths, and support needs of neurodivergent children.    In this episode we focus on understanding language and communication differences in neurodivergence, and the role that speech therapists can play. Adina talks to us about what a speech therapist is, why she doesn’t use the term ‘speech pathologist’, and how speech therapists can work with neurodivergent folks in an affirming way. We unpack what it means to communicate and the societal bias toward speech as the only form of communication. We chat about what can be behind communication differences in neurodivergent folk, and touch on gestalt language processing, the purpose of echolalia, the importance of incorporating nonspeaking time into daily life, literal interpretation of language, and interrupting. Finally, Adina shares her own experience as a neurodivergent speech therapist and gives her top tips for others.   Things we mentioned:  Visit Adina’s website here: https://playlearnchat.com/about/ Adina’s podcast is called The Exploring Neurodiversity podcast Check her out on instagram @play.learn.chat You can access Ido Kedar’s book, ‘Ido in Autismland’ here Adina's checklist for parents looking for the right speech therapist for their child is here   Want polished copies of our episode in pdf article format? Grab them here. We currently have listener favourite episodes from seasons 1-3 available for download, with more being added!   We are on Patreon! Patreon subscribers receive basic episode transcripts for Season 4, access to a monthly live zoom lang out, 50% off our episode articles, plus bonus monthly content (depending on subscription tier). Check out our Patreon page to support us, as we aim to make quality mental health care information accessible to everyone: www.patreon.com/ndwomanpod   Contact us at [email protected], or visit our website: www.ndwomanpod.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.