Wool, meet eyes. Eyes, wool

So, the "C" in "TBC" of my last post is still going to be happening - but first, a word from the wonderful world of Now. In which I have to confess that my Small Boy totally faked me out this week, and I have to brag about it.


It's no longer winter, so of course the entire household has chosen this moment in which to all get colds. In particular, the Small Boy was coughing up his lungs on a regular basis, and being dosed with cough syrup on a similar timeline.


He rather liked it. He began following me round the house saying. "Cough drink? Need a cough drink! I coughing!". And I would explain to him that you were only allowed to drink cough drink twice in the day - once in the morning and once after tea, and now we had to wait till after tea.


This pretty much held him for the first day.


The second day, clearly he had time for the wheels to turn inside his head - to interesting effect. On my third morning refusal of the "cough drink" he got very serious.


"Mamma. I go in bathroom. You stay outside." He backed slowly into the bathroom, watching me closely to ensure I didn't move, and closed the door carefully."


One minute. Two minutes. He came out. "Mamma, I drink a cough drink." Yeah right, I thought. I could clearly see the medicine cup on the sink, and the cupboard door, where the cough syrup was, still closed. He just got himself a drink of water in the medicine cup, I thought. That's fine by me.


Nope. When inspected, the cough syrup bottle was clearly open, and the medicine cup had cough syrup residue in it. Oops! The Small Boy was paying a lot more attention than I thought he was.


The really good part about all this (apart from the fact that cough syrup is actually not dangerous in large doses, and all the things that ARE dangerous in large doses are behind nice tight childproof caps) is the amount of forward planning and Theory of Mind implied in this little escapade. What does Mumma say? No cough drink till after tea. What will happen if I get myself cough drink? She will take it away. How do I stop that happening? Aha! Close the door and then she won't know!


It's not quite lying (an important Theory of Mind step) but it's a sort of proto-deception, familiar to me from the girls. The canonical exaple of this in our family is from the Taller Girl, aged 3:


"Take your finger out of your nose!"

"Mummy, look over there."

"Why?"

"So that I can put my finger in my nose!"

They get a lot better at it as they get older.


Anyway, it's a definite positive step in his mental development, and I'm immensely proud of him. Also, the cough syrup is SO going on the top shelf now.

The Year In Review

Within the last couple of weeks, it has been the one year anniversary of our first development assessment with our Maternal and Child Health Nurse, when we were wondering what on earth was up with our little boy. At the time, he was 6 weeks off his third birthday, she gave him the assessment for two and a half year olds, which he comprehensively failed (final score: 13/100).


This is how far we've come since then:



September 2010:

'doing his own thing' most of the time, not really playing with anyone.

Two words - "no" and "oh no"

No interest in toilet training

Wouldn't draw or do any craft type activity

Couldn't wait more than two seconds for anything.

Grumpy and sad and sick-seeming




September 2011:
Wants to play all the time - I can hardly get away! except when I let him have computer time, and even then he gets bored after a while and comes looking for people.

Plays with his sisters whenever they are available, initiates (very simple) conversation with trusted acquaintances, can answer questions from same.

Understands how to play tig, hide and seek, duck duck goose and a number of other games of our own devising.

Speaking in short sentences - often stringing two or three together "on topic". Understands and uses pronouns.

Completely day toilet trained as of last month

Cuts with scissors, glues, draws, paints.

Understands and accepts "first this, then that", "five minutes more" and doesn't pitch a fit about them.

Greets me with a big smile every morning.

Little Scientist

Ever get the feeling your kid is experimenting on you?

Back around the "just gone three" mark, when the Small Boy's words could still be counted on your fingers, I was continually on the lookout for signs that he understood one particular word or another. The aim was identifying individual words - there were a number of long(-ish) word strings that he clearly understood the meanings of, but extracting the specific units of meaning within those sentences was something that may or may not have been happening. So I would watch closely for signs of understanding, and set up word games to try to test his knowledge.

One of these I remember quite clearly. It was called "Where's Bear" and was played with a cast of a) Bear and b) Wombat

"Where's Bear"

{holds up Bear}

"Look! Bear! There's Bear! Where's Wombat?"

{holds up Wombat}

"Yes! Wombat!"

... and so on and so on. That was pretty much the whole game, which could go on for about fifteen minutes (which is actually rather a long time to get excited about two stuffed toys being raised ten cm multiple times). The above was the ideal - in fact the game frequently went more like this:

"Where's Bear"

{holds up Wombat}

"No! That's not Bear. That's Wombat! Where's Wombat?"

{holds up Bear}

"No! That's not Wombat."

So, totally useless from the point of view of testing his knowledge - except that I knew for a fact that he most certainly did know which of them was Bear and which was Wombat. This was Bear the Beloved, Companion of the Bedtime ... not know Bear? Impossible! And besides, he had that look in his eyes. I was busy testing him, but he'd turned it right around and was testing me. Hmmm... she said 'Bear' - what will she do if I hold up the wombat instead? Ooh! That was interesting! Lets do it again!

Of course, this has implications for IQ and language development testing, where they do just that - present him with a variety of options and ask him to identify which is which. Since he had absolutely zero motivation to identify objects correctly just because someone has asked him to, he won't. It's much more fun to identify them incorrectly, and see what your tester's reaction is.

Now that I have a Talking Small Boy, I've pretty much given up on the language testing thing. Current scheme is terribly scientific - does it "look like" he understands? If so, keep on going.

It's not the testing that matters, it's the skills. As long as the skills are developing, I can live with the uncertainty of not really knowing excatly how fast.

The Incredible Pointing Finger

I have a story I tell about the Taller Girl when she was a baby, and it goes like this:

Being a First Child, the Taller Girl was fair game for every baby fad that might happen to come along, one of which was Baby Sign Language. The theory is, kids find Sign easier to learn, in the first instance, than talking, so if you start off teaching them some sign in the early months you can get communication happening earlier than it might otherwise do, and not only does this potentially mean Early Talking (and we all like Early Talking - more on this later) but also it is far pleasanter for the baby herself to be able to make her needs understood, and all-round makes you and your Small Person have a happier time. And we all like happier times too.

So I was up for that, and I decided that the best time to go for teaching her signs was when she was sitting up for solid food, since not only was she strapped down and a helpless victim for my experimentation (hah!) the idea of food was very motivating for her. I didn't pay much attention to whether the signs I chose were "real" signs in ASL or Auslan, since I figured it didn't make much difference at this point so long as I was consistent. So I started off with two - a cup-drinking motion with thumb and little finger extended for "drink" and a "T" for "toast".

For a month or so I taught her these conscientiously at every mealtime, making the sign each time before I handed her the object, with very little obvious result. And then one day she's sitting there eating her toast, and looking thoughtfully at the cup and ... she does the sign for "drink"! And I give her the drink. And this absolutely beatific expression comes across her little face - like, "Hey! I move my hand like this and I can make them DO STUFF! Whoa, the power!"

The next day, she figured out she could get the same effect by grunting and pointing. She never actually made a hand sign again.

Now I have always told this story as a kind of joke against myself - the best laid plans of mice and mums... But it's actually not really. It has taken years, and two more children, for me to finally get what the actual point of the story is. The point is not "hey, you think you're in control of these Small Folk but actually they have their own agendas and are tricksier than you think." Though this is undoubtedly true. But the point is actually -
only eight months old and already she can point with a pointing finger! Woohoo! Go you Tiny Girl!

Pointing with a pointing finger was one of my goals for the Small Boy in the first part of the year, and he's picked it up like a champ - but we had to work on it. It didn't "just happen" like it did with the Sisters. So, pointing at eight months versus pointing at a bit over three years. It's a bit of a difference. Pointing is not one of those things like crawling or walking or saying their first words that everyone in Mums group is constantly picking over and comparing between children and wondering if their kid is picking up fast enough. But it should be. It's important. And every time I see my Small Boy grunt and point at something, I remember it.

Neurotypicals - how wierd are we?

Recently, the Small Boy has decided that he's a cat. He's been running round the house on all fours miaowing, often with a lead attached to him being pulled by a Big Sister Owner(yeah, verisimilitude fail - actually double verisimilitude fail since it's a firm rule in the house that leashes for Human Pets are never worn aorund the neck, so this is Mumma's scarf tied round his tummy).

Naturally, I am over the moon about this. Pretend Play For The Win! Also, this is treading ground that has already been well worn by the Sisters - in fact, the Taller Girl is still regularly a tiger in her tiger suit, and the Smaller Girl has been treating herself to cat facepaints as often as she can find someone to do it on her.

Still. If this weren't a thing that millions of kids do every day, something that's practically a requirement of a normal childhood, imagine how bizarre we'd find it. Pretending you're a teacher or a doctor or a daddy - fine, training for adulthood, we can see the point in that. But pretending you're a domestic animal? With a tail and whiskers and all? That's trip-to-the-psychiatrist territory.

And that's not the only bizarre thing about supposedly "normal" children. What about attachment toys - those fuzzy beloved companions of bedtime. What - you're saying your kid can't go to sleep without this particular sack of soft fluffy material in the shape of a bear/dog/sheep/cat/cow? That they talk to it as if it's real? Madness! And the universal childhood compulsion to walk on walls, when there's a perfectly good and much easier footpath just there. And invisible imaginary friends - how many kids have one of them?

Beside these peculiarities, 'strange' autistic things like hand flapping and lining up your toys seem totally normal. And just like all those behaviours have a reason, so do all the 'autistic' ones - if we can just figure out what it is.