Seamus O'Connor is non-verbal and was once unable to communicate with his parents or seven siblings, but now he is nearly nine and his parents cannot believe how far he has come.
Forrest Parade School, located in the sapling suburb of Bellamack, in Palmerston, is just six years old and already claiming to kick goals for its families.
In a Northern Territory first, the school has gone all-in with a teaching method for its 120 students where staff, students, and families use one resource to communicate.
It puts the 44 autistic-diagnosed students on a level playing field.
Seamus is autistic level three with ADHD and other diagnoses such as sensory processing disorder, global development, and delay apraxia.
He can now press buttons on an app, or point, or stare at pictures in the book carried by all staff and be understood.
Seamus's mum and full-time carer, Amy Bennett, was a driving force in getting the school on board and said the approach had been a game-changer for her Woodroffe-based family.
"He's able to now communicate with us how he feels about things," she said.
"If he's injured in some way, he can now communicate that to us, which is something that he was never able to do before.
"He's more confident in himself. He's better at communicating. He seems a lot happier.
"A lot of it was watching his body language and his facial expressions and a lot of guesswork, trial and error, to figure out what was wrong if something was wrong."
'Open chips please'
Forklift driver dad Cam O'Connor said Seamus's adaptation to the all-of-school teaching method has put everyone on even terms.
"It gave us a platform to just be able to talk to him where there was nothing beforehand," he said.
"It's just giving us the ability to talk to him like one of our other kids and for him to tell us what's going on or what's wrong or what he wants.
"If he was hurt, he wouldn't be able to tell us where. Now he can just say sick ear, or sick eye.
"He can mimic it as it's talking and he can put together sentences, such as 'open chips please' or 'want to go swimming outside'.
The language of the school
That resource is Augmentative Alternative Communication and Pragmatic Organisation Dynamic Display (PODD) devices.
Principal Annie Keighran said PODD was the language of the school.
"Our goal is to give every child a pencil, and every child a voice," she said.
"As far as the speech pathologists and the specialists they're working with, we work with them in order to establish if PODD is an appropriate system for the students to be using.
"And in most cases, it is.
"All our students respond to the pod system, even the verbal students because it helps with their understanding or their comprehension.
"If a specialist or a speech pathologist says PODD is not the way forward for a child, then of course we support whatever other device or communication system is recommended."
Ms Keighran has been teaching special needs children around the world since 1991.
"I adamantly believe that comprehensive literacy and pod is the most exciting thing to happen in special education in all my years."
Thumbs up
Griffith University Menzies Health Institute associate professor David Trembath said individualising the teaching method is key to success.
"it's really good to see a school taking a whole-school approach to supporting communication," he said.
"We'd always want to see their specific approach individualised to ensure that the system is meeting each child's individual strengths and needs."
