In one of those make-my-day moments, during speech therapy J-Man actually fed a bear with an empty spoon after ‘dipping’ the spoon in an empty bowl. So nothing in the bowl or on the spoon, and – shocking newsflash – stuffed bears don’t eat! It’s an abstract, non-literal event! And this is a kid with all manner of feeding issues who is distrustful of most all things culinary. But with some encouragement and direction, he figured out he could pretend to feed the bear without there needing to be literal feeding going on, and he thought it was fun!
If there was one part of the autism evaluation that he basically scored close to zero on, it was pretend play.
He’s never done this before. So….
We now interrupt this news flash for a freak out.
OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG!!!
W00t! Huzzah! Yay!
We now return you to our regular programming.
—-
Today’s new conversation:
“Who’s the man?”
“I-I muh-muh!” (I’m the man!)
The little bits of grace that sneak up on you. The little cures for what ails ya.
Posts that hopefully are similar:
- One Syllable At a Time
- This Week in Achievements!
- He can type?!?
- My Name is (WHAT?)
- What’s Your Autistic Toddler Like Now? (Part 1)
- What’s Your Autistic Toddler Like?
- Breaking News – Other Kids Have Names!!
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
That’s wonderful! I love those moments!
I’ve lived off that high for most of the past few days. It’s those moments that are the kick in the butt we need sometimes to keep our spirits up and our eyes looking forward.
This is pretty darned awesome. Truly.
Thanks!
Normally once he ‘gets’ something once, he can build pretty rapidly off of that. Pretend play feels like a much bigger mountain to climb though, which shouldn’t be surprising for an autistic child. Letters and numbers and colors are a lot more straightforward in the grand scheme of things.
Regardless of how big the mountain is, if we can just get on the mountain to begin with, that’s a start. And you have to start somewhere.
Even in the midst of a very rough week, there are still these kinds of moments. Through achievements like this, he does a good job helping us keep things in perspective.