I was reading a post recently on Facebook about autistic children who talk for hours at a time and I thought I would bring together the threads from my experience and the parents that contributed to try and shine a little light on why a child does this and what might help them change their experience, when it is causing them or their families distress.

1. When non-autistic people feel stuck with a problem, just explaining it to someone else, helps them get more clarity. Autistic people have explained that talking aloud helps them sort out their thoughts, perhaps this is just a much more intense version, of the above.

2. When people are ungrounded, which many autistic people are, with high levels of stress, people often talk very fast, sometimes without drawing breath.

3. When an autistic person is talking about their “pet” subject, then they are totally engrossed…