Changelings, Communication, and the Hidden Wisdom of Non-Speaking Children
⚠️ Content Note: This piece discusses historical mistreatment of children and mothers in relation to changeling folklore. Please take care while reading.
There’s a particular kind of silence that mothers remember.
Not the quiet of peace, but of absence… when the babbling stops, when the words disappear, when the light behind a child’s eyes seems to turn inward.
When my son was nearly two, he just… shut off. He had been meeting milestones, chattering away, and then, almost overnight, he stopped. No one told me that autistic regression - the loss of previously developed skills - was even a thing. I thought autism was something you could always see from birth.
And so, as I tried to understand what had happened, I found myself drawn to the ancient Irish stories of the changeling… and I began to wonder whether these myths, whispered through generations, were early attempts to describe something we now call autism.
The Changeling in Irish Folklore
In old Irish belief, the Sidhe (pronounced “shee”) - the fairy folk - were mysterious, powerful beings who lived in a world just beside our own. Sometimes they were seen as guardians of nature; other times, as unpredictable spirits capable of crossing into human life.
The changeling myth tells of a fairy child left in place of a human baby who had been taken to the fairy realm. The changeling looked the same, but something was off: a strange stillness, an unfamiliar cry, a distant gaze.
In Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry by W.B. Yeats, one mother laments,
“He has the same face as my own, but he never laughs nor cries. His gaze goes through me like I am not there.”
Another story collected by Lady Wilde speaks of a child who
“neither spoke nor smiled, but sat all day long crooning to himself in a low, lonesome wail.”
These weren’t just eerie embellishments. They were the language of bewildered love. Of parents watching their children change before their eyes, with no language, no diagnosis, and no help to explain it.When we read these stories through a modern lens, the fear and sorrow behind them feel heartbreakingly familiar. Because what do you call it when your child stops speaking, stops responding, begins to rock or scream or stare through you… if no one has ever named it before?
The Dark History Behind the Myth
But there’s another side to these tales. One that’s harder to speak about.
In a world without medical knowledge, fear often turned to desperation. Believing a child had been “taken” by the fairies, some families tried to force the changeling to reveal itself or compel the “real” child to return. Folkloric practices - from placing the child near the fire to leaving them outside overnight - reflected tragic misunderstandings born of grief, exhaustion, and cultural belief.
The most infamous case is that of Bridget Cleary, a young Irish woman burned to death by her husband in 1895 after he claimed she had been replaced by a fairy. Her story became an international scandal and a haunting reminder of how myth and fear can intertwine with misogyny, mental illness, and social control.
Though that was an adult case, countless children were also harmed in the name of “driving out” the changeling… often those who were disabled, sickly, or neurodivergent by today’s understanding.
It’s difficult to read these accounts without sorrow. But facing them helps us see the compassion gap that once existed… and the cost of misunderstanding difference.
That’s why reclaiming the changeling myth matters. Because acknowledging this past is part of transforming it.
A Neurodivergent Reading of the Myth
For centuries, changeling stories carried both reverence and fear. But today, modern scholars and neurodivergent writers are re-reading them through a new lens.
Folklorist Dr Michael Newton has suggested that changeling tales may have been pre-scientific attempts to understand children with developmental differences. In disability studies, writers like Rosemarie Garland-Thomson and Carol Thomas remind us that culture shapes the way we interpret difference, and that before we had diagnostic language, we had stories.
The changeling, then, becomes a metaphor for a child who does not conform to expected patterns of communication or behaviour - one who experiences and expresses the world differently.
What was once called “otherworldly” might, in truth, have been a form of neurodivergence.
And while many of these stories ended in tragedy, rooted in fear and misunderstanding, we now have the chance to reclaim them. To see not monsters or mysteries, but children whose ways of being stretch our understanding of humanity itself.
The Hidden Wisdom of Non-Speaking Children
Modern autism advocacy - especially within the non-speaking community - is revealing a truth that folklore may have hinted at all along: there is deep intelligence and rich inner life in those who cannot speak.
Through methods like Spelling to Communicate (S2C), many non-speaking autistic people are now sharing their thoughts for the first time.
Author Ido Kedar, in Ido in Autismland, wrote:
“I have an intact mind trapped in a disobedient body.”
Their words are powerful reminders that speech is not the same as communication.
Some families and non-speakers describe experiences that seem to border on intuition or telepathy — a kind of knowing that exists before language. This may sound mystical, but perhaps that’s the point. If fairy stories were once our ancestors’ way of describing these uncanny, wordless connections, maybe they were closer to understanding than we realise.
Recently, I listened to a fascinating podcast series called The Telepathy Tapes, which explores moments of deep intuitive connection between non-speaking autistic individuals and their families. It doesn’t claim to prove anything supernatural; rather, it invites us to stay curious about how humans connect and how much we still don’t understand about communication and consciousness.
To me, it echoed something ancient: the idea that there are forms of knowing and perceiving that move beyond language.
What if the child who “stares through you” isn’t absent, but seeing differently?
What if they are communicating on a frequency we haven’t yet learned to hear?
Reclaiming the Changeling
What would it mean to reclaim the changeling story… not as a warning, but as a celebration of difference?
To see the “fairy child” not as a replacement or a loss, but as a child whose way of being pulls us into deeper forms of listening and love?
For me, this is more than folklore. It’s a practice. It’s learning to listen beyond words - to gestures, rhythms, energy, silence. It’s believing that my son’s wisdom is not diminished because it doesn’t arrive in speech.
Maybe the changeling story can be rewritten… from one of fear to one of faith:
Faith in our children. Faith in connection. Faith that some wisdoms live beyond words.
Because perhaps the myths always knew.
Listen to the full episode:
Next step
If this story resonates, you might find my free guide The First 30 Days especially grounding — a gentle companion for those early weeks after diagnosis. Download it here →
