Ask a Silly Question, Get A…Wait, Did You Just ANSWER?

Unanswered questions…this describes autism so perfectly both literally and figuratively. We still don’t know how autism truly manifests, why it happens, how to treat many of the devastating symptoms. We still don’t know the best strategies for effective communication, which leads to many parents asking their children questions and waiting for an answer that may never come.

I narrate our day. In the early days of motherhood, the “experts” all said that you should talk through what you are doing with your pudgy infants and curious toddlers and that you should do this using normal language rather than “baby talk”. So it became a habit, and those of you that have ever held a conversation with Larkin (if she let you get a word in) know that she’s basically been speaking like an adult since she was 3. This is of course in stark contrast to Kellen.

Dose of Reality #3857: Kellen is what you would call “limited verbal”. This means that he graduated from “non-verbal” (which is generally the extreme where no spoken words are used to communicate daily), however, we can no means have a conversation with him. His receptive language has increased (meaning we can see that he’s understanding what WE are saying), but his spontaneous language has been restricted to basic wants (“I want milk.”). And it is very, very, very difficult to get him to answer a question. He generally just echoes the question right back to you.

Regardless, I narrate our lives, and this includes constantly asking Kellen questions about what he thinks, what he’s doing, etc. and never expecting an actual answer. My expectations are going to need to change.

Kellen gets upset. Sometimes we can determine why pretty easily, other times we’re guessing blindly, and a lot of the time we don’t have a freaking clue. He’s historically gotten upset when one of us leaves the house (especially me), but it’s been pretty sad/amazing that now he’ll actually ask for the person. Looking for me, he’ll wander the house saying “Mama.” He’ll now notice that Patrick’s truck is gone and start saying “Daddy.” And considering that “Daddy” took an awfully long time to become part of his limited vocabulary, I know Patrick secretly loves this. It helps to know why he’s upset, even if there’s nothing we can do about it besides comfort him.

So Patrick gets home from the grocery store on Sunday. Kellen is at the front door saying “Daddy”, and then I send Larkin out to help him with the bags. As soon as she steps out, he whines, and I say “What’s wrong buddy?” to which he replies “Larkin!”

This was the first time he had ever asked for her. (Yes, I shed a tear, shut up).And then that afternoon turned into a series of ridiculous moments that no one could have predicted.

* Kellen with a concerned look on his face was looking under and around everything downstairs. *

Me: What’d you lose buddy?
Kellen: Perry

Holy crap, he had misplaced Perry the Platypus and actually TOLD us what he was looking for.

* Kellen has been carrying around a very carefully constructed Lego creation for a few days now. I made a point of taking it and trying to see if just maybe it was “something” to him. *

Me: What is it?
Kellen: Rescuebot

What the? And then we look at it and “see” the head, arms, legs that do in fact resemble a Transformer, and certainly the primary colors of the Legos lend themselves to the Rescue Bots. And you see this is another one of those things that “autism isn’t supposed to do”. They’re supposed to view the blocks as just that, blocks. They’re not supposed to create something imaginary and then proceed to play with it as that imaginary thing; they’re supposed to play with the objects as they are or in a restrictive and repetitive way. Yet, we see more and more of our kids showing us how wrong many of these assumptions are.

* Kellen pulling my arm because he wants me to go somewhere. I’ve started not going with him until he verbally communicates something, which at best is “Downstairs” or “Outside”. *

Me: What do you need?
Kellen: Potty

Mind you this is a glass half full moment. He had pooped in his underwear (still working on that one, suggestions welcome LOL!), but he had come to get me, had told me where we needed to go, and then of course I HAD to go.

* Kellen again pulling my arm a while later. *

Me: What do you want?
Kellen: (you can see in his face that he is thinking really hard about what word he could possibly use) Come on!

Are you kidding me? So after much laughter, of course I went!

* And then I’m sitting with him and watching him carefully select a few blocks and arrange them just so. This is what he ended up with. *
So I took another shot.

Me: What is it?
Kellen: Little Einsteins (and then proceeds to fly it around like Rocket).

I’ve asked questions of him for years but had resigned myself to the fact that I was talking to myself. Not anymore. I’m once again humbled to remember that we are on HIS timeline, not the timeline dictated by any study, any doctor, and certainly not by me. Thanks buddy for again making me throw the status quo out the window.