I Am Here!
Jack likes to lean out of our windows (we have no screens) and yell at passersby, usually other children.
“I am here! Here I am!” he bellows, at the top of his lungs.
If he wasn’t in school, I’d worry he wasn’t getting enough socialization. Perhaps he needs to be out in the neighborhood on his bike making friends. Maybe he just wants to make his presence known.
Hey world, Jack is here.
I'm Impressed. Really.
One of the hallmarks of autism is an apparent lack of emotional engagement in the outside world. Autistic individuals often seem to regard happenings and others passively, with little or no reaction, even in an emotionally charged situation.
Thankfully Jack is rich with outward emotion (even though it may not always be the appropriate one). While he has feelings just like any other child, he’s had to learn how to express them properly, just like he had to learn proper speech patterns.
Watching him work things out like that fascinates me. I love to ask him questions, like “did you enjoy that walk we took?” or “how did you feel when your brother finished a puzzle all by himself?” I want to see if what he was experiencing inside jibed with how he physically reacted. More and more, the two are aligning.
As much as I love being involved in his learning processes, I’m starting to think my innocent queries are wearing on Jack.
We took a drive through the mountains a few weeks ago, and the melting snow made waterfalls all along our route. The boys were giddy trying to find them all. After a while, they grew silent.
“Jack, are you still looking out the window? What do you see?” I asked.
“I saw the waterfalls and I said ‘ooooh’ to them,” he snapped back.
Well alrighty then. Perhaps I should find a less obvious way to be all up in my son’s emotional development.
You are Me as We are All Together
There is an evolution of language acquisition. Children learn the parts of speech in fits and starts, usually in the same order as other kids. So what happens when your child simply doesn’t speak before age two or three, and has to be taught everything, rather than pick it up themselves naturally? Curious things, I tell you. Curious things.
As I’ve mentioned before, Jack had only about four words by age two (although looking back at video I can make out a few more that we didn’t pick up on at the time). Due in large part to the awesome Miss Amanda, speech therapist extraordinaire, he began speaking in earnest not long after his therapy started.
Unlike Jack’s siblings, he had no “baby talk.” He skipped that part and went straight for the gold. He had his cute mispronunciations, of course. One of our all-time favourites is “helicopter,” spoken like a tiny Frenchman as “ell-ee-oh-cop-tayr.” For the most part, though, he simply picked up what Amanda was putting down, and went with it.
As a self-proclaimed word geek, I loved seeing Jack’s language unfold. I had always dreamed of having conversations with my child, as every mama does, and for the first time it was happening. And it was happening in a completely unique way.
Lots of small children confuse proper pronouns and genders and tenses. English is an extremely difficult language, even if it is your native tongue. Jack is no exception, although he had to learn the difference in genders through play. Everyone was a boy for a very long time. In fact, it was only recently that his favourite train Julia became the girl she was meant to be.
One of the hardest concepts Jack dealt with was with proper pronouns. He referred to himself as “you” for quite some time, much to the confusion of others. Having a conversation with him was a convoluted affair, trying to figure out which “you” he meant when.
Jack: “You’re going for a walk.”
Me: “No, *you’re* going for a walk.”
Jack, exasperated: “Yes. You’re going for a walk.”
You see where this is going.
As he learned, he started putting his own spin on things. He worked out who exactly “you” was in proper context, and eventually stopped calling women “him.” He even started naming toys and playthings.
This summer we scored a couple of big car hauler trucks at some rummage sales, and adding in the two smaller ones we had at home, Jack created a car hauler family. He named them Mom, Dad, and Baby (both of the small ones were named Baby). Several times I have run from one end of the house to the other after hearing a frantic “Moooommmm!!!” only to find an infant truck in search of its mother. Repeated pleas to change their names have fallen on deaf ears.
Most of the quirks in Jack’s speech are gone now, as he’s five-and-a-half (what?!?) and on to learning French. Now he’s mixing both languages as he’s learning, and it’s hard to recall the days when he barely spoke at all. It’s not something I ever want to forget.
Jack the Explorer Giant
Jack’s imagination fascinates me nowadays. He has entire worlds in his head, and I’m getting glimpses of them here and there. Lately, he’s been talking to his fingers. Rather, his fingers have been talking to me.
It took me a bit to realize the stilted voice he was using during play was “another person,” as I initially thought he was talking for his toy trucks and trains and planes. As I listened while making dinner one night, though, I caught pieces of a three-way conversation.
“Who are you talking to, Jack?” I asked.
“Brother and Sister are riding in the plane,” he said, simply. He had his hand in a small plane as it flew around the room. I called him over to the stove and started asking questions about “Brother and Sister,” desperately hoping we weren’t heading into “The Shining” territory.
What I discovered is “Brother and Sister” are Jack’s fingers. They don’t have a dad and a mom, but they’re not lost, because they have Jack. They do not have a house. They go to school with Jack, but they don’t need to learn French, because they don’t have any language. When Jack speaks English, they speak English, and when Jack speaks French, they speak French.
His fingers say Jack is a giant, but he’s an explorer giant, not a scary giant.
Brother and Sister are around a lot. They ride in the van, they play in Jack’s trains and other toys, and sometimes they converse with Lennon, too. Mainly, though, they are Jack’s little buddies.
I wonder how long Brother and Sister are going to hang around with Jack the Explorer Giant. Considering I never thought Jack would have an imaginary friend (or two), I’m pretty happy they’re here. At least as long as Brother doesn’t change his name to Tony.
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My kids love Christmas. Not a surprise, I know, but it’s still exciting for us. My husband and I have waited eagerly for the time our children would finally “get” the holiday and all of the traditions surrounding it. Finally, at the ages of 5, 3 1/2 and 2, they collectively figured it out. Christmas fever ran rampant in our home from American Thanksgiving on (we celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving as well, but since it’s in early October, that’s a bit early to bring out the tree).
We love the whole circus that is Christmas. We have countdown calendars for each child, we hang lights and decorations, we have a big tree with a star on top, stockings (actually two apiece, one for toys and a smaller one for treats), we spread “reindeer dust” (oatmeal and glitter) so they can find our home, we leave cookies and milk and carrots out on Christmas Eve, and, of course, we go visit Santa.
Until now, the Santa visit has been simply an opportunity for the boys to see the man who brings toys in person, and a photo op for mama. They love the idea of him, they’re tickled to see him in person, they reluctantly speak to him and have their photo taken. Last year all three boys asked Santa for a train, and they got trains. I didn’t push the idea of a list too much, and they didn’t seem too interested.
This year, before we went to see The Man Himself, I asked my children once again if they wanted to make a Christmas list. They had all decided to ask for a Polar Express train (conveniently suggested by me), and that seemed enough for Lennon and Kieran. Jack, however, was intrigued. He wanted to know more about this magical way to get more stuff. After I explained that Jack could write a list to give to Santa telling him what gifts he’d like for Christmas, he was all about it.
I recall sitting on my bedroom floor as a young child with the huge Sears, JC Penney and Toys-R-Us Christmas editions spread out before me. I compiled novel-length missives to Santa, including things I had never even heard of but discovered in the depths of the catalogues. I rarely got a fraction of what I asked for, but it wasn’t about that. For me, just the thrill of having the whole world of toys available for the asking was good enough.
Jack didn’t need a catalogue. He was ready to go. He started telling me what he wanted, slowly at first, then with breathless abandon. I had to go grab a pen and paper. Jack wanted a fire truck, a book about “strange things happening,” the aforementioned Polar Express train, a new water bottle, some new clothes, new sheets for his bed, and on and on and on. Together, we wrote out his list for Santa, and I mailed it to the North Pole.
With regards to Jack, that is rarely that.
About a week before Christmas we were returning from a quick trip to the US for supplies (cheese is a lot cheaper there, and we’re quite the cheesy family). Sitting in line at customs, Jack was telling his Daddy about his Christmas list. When he realized that Daddy didn’t have his own list, Jack decided that he needed to rectify the situation. He then told us what Daddy would be asking Santa for for Christmas:
1) new headphones (Daddy sleeps listening to Old Time Radio and goes through earbuds quickly)
2) a new phone (Daddy goes through mobile phones quickly, too)
3) a new mask (Daddy wears a c-pap to sleep, and the boys like to take it apart)
4) a new light bulb for the house (the light bulbs keep burning out in our new place, so this is just practical)
Not bad. Some fun stuff, some things he needs, all in all a well-rounded wish list. On a roll, Jack turned to me. I was eager to see what I would be asking Santa to bring for me. In retrospect, I shouldn’t have been so excited.
1) a tent for camping (we have never camped, not even once)
2) baby gate (we got rid of all of our gates when we moved, and maybe I miss them?)
3) baking soda for throwup (all of us had a wicked stomach virus before and during Christmas)
4) a red flag to wave to stop the van for when daddy forgets me (he learned about the red flags for stopping trains – not exactly sure why Daddy would be driving off without me)
No toys, nothing fun, unless perhaps he thinks I get some joy out of cleaning nasty things up with baking soda. That’s it. He was adamant about it, too.
For some reason I didn’t get anything on my list. I can’t wait to see what I ask for next year.
