She Talks Funny

My Child Is Not Your 'Teachable Moment'

We're perched at a rectangular, kid's-size table in the art room of an indoor play gym, and she is painting a collection of methodically selected picture print-outs. Embracing her focus and age-appropriate activity - ephemeral as it will be - I attentively respond to her endless, artistic demands like an attendant in an operating room. I don't want to break the spell.

Her word approximations erupt loudly, jumbly and jolty: "Wa du"..."On-ch"..."hep." Instinctively, I know to present water for her paintbrush; fresh, orange paint; and the help she wants un-sticking her painted papers - all the while, rewarding and validating my autistic, apraxic child's emerging language and articulation.

A younger boy enters, maybe around 4 or 5, his mom by his side. (I know this because be calls her "mom" with the startlingly perfect clarity and tone that sucker-punches me every time. It shouldn't surprise me to hear children half her age orating like rock stars, but somehow it still does.)

A Broken Keurig, Instant Grits & Other Travesties: A Morality Tale

At its heart, autism is a communications disorder. The DSM-IV checklist lists "qualitative impairments in communication" as a diagnostic criterion. 

My daughter? Check. Plus.

She also has - by anyone's diagnostic standards - a voracious appetite. I wouldn't call her a "picky eater" (tree bark, anyone?), but she can be fickle and demanding at times. Girlfriend knows what she wants.

So, chasing her into the kitchen yesterday, I found her ripping open a package of instant grits. (I didn't even know we had that!) Ever self-sufficient, she proceeded to dump it into a disposable, hot cup and pivoted around to, apparently, run hot water through the Keurig to complete her snack.

I know it sounds like she's an independent, little chef, but we do not allow her to operate anything in the kitchen alone. We know better. So does she!

What she didn't know was that our beloved Keurig didn't work anymore (boo hoo!), and I had removed it to try and return it. 

I wish I could have captured the look on her face. The Keurig might possibly be the most important, frequented appliance in the house. Poof! It was gone!

What would your 8-year-old do? I imagine, at this point, many would call for Mom (I was standing three feet away), ask where the machine went, demand help.

I watched with curiosity. Ever resourceful and independent, my daughter simply turned to the refrigerator and  filled the cup with water from the dispenser.

Of course, now her grits are ice cold (as well as completely over-saturated, but that's besides the point). 

Now, does she ask for help? Uh uh. Oh, she's very frustrated, yelling a little, but she just decides to move on to the microwave - where our story must end with an angry intervention. No, my autistic 8-year-old is not allowed to use the microwave.

The whole incident reminded me of my years-ago Floortime training...learning to create a "circle of communication," a reciprocal, back-and-forth interaction. 

Nope, not a single circle of communication going on here, but there were numerous opportunities to create them.

One Floortime strategy is to engage a hard-to-reach child using a "playful obstruction." Do something that will get their attention! Wear an unexpected, silly hat. Join the child while they are lining up cars, and then make the cars crash. Any resulting eye contact, interaction or response to the action counts toward your Circle.

No hot water? No coffee? You certainly have my attention! 

Yet, communicating with me to help her solve her problem didn't even occur to her. 

While she's come a long way, communication always will be hard for her. She's severely apraxic, so the actual act of speaking clearly is a huge obstacle for her. Sign language and augmentative communication devices like her iPad offer wonderful alternatives, and I am grateful every day for them. However, they only work when a person is motivated and interested in communicating. 

Wouldn't you agree that communicating and interacting with me to solve her devastating, instant-grits problem was the most likely, obvious and best course of action? 

Unfortunately, for her, it also was the hardest. 

Wordless Wednesday: The Language Of Love

She tries to speak, but her body won't listen...so my daughter must fulfill her human drive to communicate in other ways. How would you do it?

Through sign language, grunting, pointing, screaming and "approximating" (sounding out words as best she can), she gets what she needs. The larger challenge, however, is understanding and expressing her feelings, motivations, abstract thoughts.

While we focused on teaching her to "look into our eyes" and "properly" play with dolls, she taught herself to read and write (with some help, of course, from phenomenal teachers and therapists). How lucky we are that we have access to technology that can serve as a surrogate voice for this expressive, nonverbal 7-year-old.

Often, it's still easier and more satisfying for her to stage a tantrum, but slowly we are uncaging our daughter's inner voice.

Perhaps the words never will readily flow from her mouth, and that's okay. That's not really where words come from anyway, is it?