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.

Mommy, can we go to the Liberty of Statue?

If you get really sick, do you have to go to the hopsickle?

 Are you putting that in the garbage despoil?

When I grow up, will you go up to Heaven with me to pick out my babies?

Mommy, you’re my favorite person in our fam-i-ly. Daddy, are you going to cry?

Did you know there’s sheila-monsters (gila monsters) in the desert?

At lunch today they had beef patty on bun.

….(on the way into the bathroom)…then we had rocket math and I got 37 problems right. WOW! THAT’S THE BIGGEST POOP I EVER SEEN!

When I grow up and go to work, will you drive me? Because I don’t know how to get there.

     C spoke his first word two weeks before his second birthday. He said “more.” We expected additional words to come quickly, but it took another painful year before he added more than a few words. Then, when he was 3 1/2, his language exploded and all of a sudden he had tons of words. Like many children with autism, he repeated phrases and sentences he had heard elsewhere (echolalia). He often used the phrases and sentences in the appropriate situations, but they were all parroted back to us in exactly the way they had previously been spoken by someone else. That someone else was either a family member, a tv commercial, or a cartoon character. It really was quite amazing that he used the words in the correct social situation, which led people to believe he had more language than he did. He never said anything spontaneously, and there were certainly no back and forth conversations.

     I remember his first “creative” conversation vividly. We were in Target, and I was buying wrapping paper for his upcoming fourth birthday. I was talking my way through the store in the way I usually did with him - constantly trying to engage him in a real conversation. I told him the birthday paper was for wrapping all of his birthday presents. He was silent for a few moments before he looked through the tube of paper and said, “But Mommy, there’s no presents in there!” I was stunned, and walked around the rest of the store in gleeful, tearful oblivion.