What We Need

     Imaginary play can be slow to develop in autistic children. Like C’s language of echolalia (repeating things he’d heard elsewhere), he seemed, for a long time, only to play in scenarios taken from somewhere else. He would painstakingly recreate a Thomas the Train episode with his toy engines, no small feat in and of itself, truth be told.

     Slowly, however, signs of imagination in his play emerged. While he was and is still rooted in a very concrete world, I see moments of creativity and even downright exaggeration appearing in his thoughts. “There was a fly in my room. Pause. It was THIS big. (Imagine the gesture from the guy telling the fish story inserted here.) I shoo-ded it out of my room. It almost broked the window going outside.”

     I laughed out loud at this one. Laughed because, well, it was funny, and laughed because he was so earnest while telling his tall tale. I could picture him years from now shooting the breeze with the guys and perhaps even getting away with it.

     And that, I say with delight, is THIS BIG.