About Me

Hi, I'm Aakanksha 👋

I'm Aakanksha Chitnis-Gupte, a Pediatric Speech-Language Pathologist with over 12 years of clinical experience working with autistic and neurodivergent children and their families.

I didn't set out to work with autism specifically. I set out to understand communication, in all its forms. But over years of sitting on the floor with children, watching the way they moved, what captured their attention, how they reached out (or didn't), something became undeniably clear to me: the missing piece was never inside the child. It was in the space between the child and the adults who loved them.

Therapy helped. But therapy alone was never enough. The breakthroughs I witnessed happened in kitchens and living rooms, not clinical rooms. They happened when a parent stopped trying to redirect their child and started following them. When a teacher stopped managing a child's behaviour and started wondering about it. When a family stopped asking "what's wrong with my child?" and started asking "what does my child need from me?"

That realisation is what gave birth to Vision Beyond Autism. My work is not about fixing children. It is about expanding the capacity of the people around them. I draw on the Hanen Approach (building language through everyday interactions), DIR Floortime (following the child's lead to deepen emotional connection), the SCERTS Model (a comprehensive framework for social communication and emotional regulation), and Access Consciousness Tools (practices that invite parents out of judgment and into curiosity). Together, these create a whole-family, whole-child approach that changes not just outcomes, but relationships.

Begin the Journey →