But that seemed to assume a way in which the words themselves are the most important part of communication. Sure, the next therapist may say the same words, but what about their body language, what about their eye contact? What if they’re too tall or have a beard or are too woggle for the autistic kid to understand?

Now, obviously, everyone’s trying their best here to make it a learnable experience for the kid, and once the kid’s out of this teaching, they need to be able to respond even if the person asking them for the pen is too woggle for words. But there’s a way in which I was a bit disappointed in that emphasis, because it suggested that they were missing, perhaps, the ethnomethods of the kid: the way in which they make sense of the world. I feel like the judge above is doing a tricky but laudable piece of work, figuring out how the two sides are trying to make sense of the world.