“Hey! Why is it in a bag!?”
I was completely taken aback.
Jonah has NEVER asked me a question in his life.
He was almost completely nonverbal when he was diagnosed with Autism (lvl 3) at age 3 back in 2016.
The only word he could say was “done.”
He has worked VERY hard in the years following.
But even so, there have always been limitations with his speech. I will still introduce him as “nonverbal” to new people because he is not going to talk to them. He is not going to answer any questions. He is not going to verbally interact with others he doesn’t know well, even if he is capable.
Everything Jonah uses in his everyday “vocabulary” almost exclusively relates to his own self-advocacy.
…which is great. Jonah can express his wants and needs as well as address his dislikes or anxieties without resorting to unwanted behavior.
When we started speech therapy with Jonah, self-advocacy was one of our goals.
Actually… it was our MAIN goal. I wanted Jonah to be able to express his wants and needs to others without outside help and have people understand him.
“I want water!”
“I want chips!”
“I need to go potty!”
“I want to go play out front!”
“Stop teasing me!”
“Stop it with the ‘______’”
His entire expressive language revolves around slight variations of “I want…”
“All done…”
“_____ Stop it!” or
“That’s mine!”
Beyond that, I have absolutely no idea what Jonah was capable of.
Fast-forward to today. Jonah asked for some chocolate muffin for breakfast.
Usually, Jonah will take a proverbial ETERNITY to eat anything, and he won’t eat anything that has gone stale.
So he has been asking for chocolate muffins, eating a few bites of it over the course of several minutes, and then ask for “more” chocolate muffin after the one he was slowly eating started to harden.
So to remedy that, I brought his chocolate muffin in a ziplock bag.
To which he asked (or demanded, with just the right flavor of casual indignance), “Hey! Why is this in a bag?!”
I was so taken at unawares, I had to swallow the retort I had reserved for my older boy, (who ALSO takes a proverbial eternity to eat).
But Jonah just sat there staring at me like… “seriously?”
I had to DECIPHER Jonah’s question. He wasn’t actually asking me why the chocolate muffin was in the bag (even though that’s what he LITERALLY said).
The question was actually rhetorical.
Like, “hey Dad. Did you not notice that you SCREWED UP the breakfast routine?”
Like, I had to stop and marvel at the conceptual thought process that went into that question. It was totally appropriate to the situation. It was abstract, unscripted, and it was completely open-ended.
But was he actually making conversation here? It sure sounded like it.
I did not have a “prepared response” as I normally do for all of Jonah’s typical “Jonah-isms,” so I improvised on the spot.
😳
“OOPSIES!!! Silly Daddy!”
(And I opened the bag and dumped all his chocolate muffin back onto his plate)
I stood there, beaming, watching Jonah completely oblivious to the huge milestone we just hit… just continuing to take his time eating his breakfast…
If the chocolate muffin goes stale, it goes stale.
I’ll buy more if I need to.
Honestly, it’s well-worth it to me.
#smALLVICTORIES #Ausome