Learning a New Language

Communicating with my son has become learning a foreign language. All parents go through some form of this interpreting skill as our children learn to talk. We hear it every day, so we can interpret the babbling into coherence for others. For example, with Lizzy, she became so used to us asking her if she wanted "more drink" that when she does want more drink, she asks "Moink?" We're working on breaking that one word into two.

With Darin, not only do we have to interpret the words he can speak, we have to understand what those mean to him so we can use them appropriately. Our latest development has been "castle ball". For those of you who haven't learned this new phrase from Darin in the last week, can you guess what that means?

Did you guess miniature golf? Well, that's what "castle ball" is. We took the kids to play minature golf last weekend and there is a castle on the course. Thus, castle ball was born. Darin loves to play miniature golf, and as we take him to play castle ball in the coming weeks, we'll be working on learning "miniature golf" instead of "castle ball". It is all about learning his language and then finding a way to teach him the words most people use. With something like "castle ball", it is easy because it is so tangible. But I know there will be words that he will find his own way of interpreting that will be harder to conceptualize for teaching purposes.

Bad Behavior Can Be Good

When you are a parent of a child with autism, it can be interesting when you have moments of being happy when your child is being difficult.

This last weekend, my best friend and her husband (who happens to be one of my husband's brothers) came to stay with us while they took her sister up to Weber State. They were only able to stay with us for about a day and a half, and for most of that time, they were out and about. When they left on Sunday morning, Darin was VERY sad to see them go. Now perhaps my son can recogize a kindred sprit in Uncle Jared who also has autism, but it was so wonderful to see Darin be emotionally attached to Uncle Jared - even if he was pouty and cranky for about an hour afterward.

But even more exciting was to hear that my children were fighting over an imaginary backpack. Autistic kids usually don't have a great knack for imaginary play, so when Scott told me that Darin and Lizzy had been fighting and crying over an imaginary backpack, I couldn't help but be pleased. Darin had been watching Dora the Explorer (one of his favorite shows unfortunately - the show drives us crazy!) and he put on an imaginary backpack when Dora put on her backpack. Well, Lizzy came over and "took" Darin's imaginary backpack and put it on herself. Darin came and "took" it back. The fighting ensued. But in the midst of the chaos (which I was luckily not a part of), it was exciting to note that not only did Darin imagine a backpack, he was able to continue to imagine that his backpack had been taken. He could have completely ignored Lizzy's behavior and not understand what she meant by her actions, but he caught on and took his revenge quickly.

So even though I'm sure there was some hitting involved in the episode, there was still joy in the moment.