One of the rarer Janey modes is the extremely talkative mode. It's as rare as the proverbial blue moon, but we had one this morning. The morning had started out rough, with a lot of screaming and tantrums, and Tony and I decided we better get Janey out of the house fast. She usually does much better on the go on weekends, rather than sitting around the dull old house. It doesn't really matter where we go, just THAT we go. So we took her to the big Goodwill downtown, and then we were talking about where we were going to get a bite to eat, and Janey came up with this sentence "You are thinking you are talking about getting your bear chicken nuggets" 12 words! I often call Janey "my bear", so that is where that part comes from, and our talk was along the lines of "what are you thinking we should get Janey? That was only one of about 10 great sentences out of her today, all of which we about what we were actually talking about. While I was in the store, Tony and Janey were walking around and saw a squirrel up a tree, and Tony asked Janey to say hi to the squirrel (we are always practicing those greetings!), and instead she said "Hey, squirrel, what are you doing up there?"
It's hard to express how rare talking like this is from Janey. It's like if someone usually was at about the level of subtraction in doing math, and suddenly started doing algebra, and then went back to subtraction, and then had days where counting to 10 was a challenge. It's the part of Janey autism that is amazing and at the same time, heartbreaking. How often are sentences like that in her head, and can't find their way out? How often does she understand what we are saying, and have something to add, but just can't? Is there some strategy, some magic method I don't know, that would unlock Janey? I just don't know.
Rarer in Girls...Life with my daughter Janey, who is twenty and severely autistic
5 comments:
It's interesting that on her bad days she does well being out and about. It seems that for me and my kids, it's easiest to stay home on those bad days. But I suppose being busy makes sense versus being at "boring 'ol home!"
Except on the very worst days, going out of the house will improve Janey's mood. I think it's partly because at home, she gets obsessed with videos, and overwhelmed with the choices, and annoyed if anything stands in the way of her routines. She doesn't have a routine when we go out (except for asking for McDonalds, which we don't give in to enough for it to become a routine), so that source of stress is eliminated. Plus she just likes to stay very active. She gets that from her father, not me!
It's almost like the connections in her brain are scrambled most of the time, but at rare moments like this the connections suddenly make sense of each other and she has a breakthrough moment like these sentences she was coming out with today. I think that Janey will continue to surprise and amaze you, and quite honestly I believe she's smarter than we all give her credit for.
My daughter is mostly echolalic, but every now and then she will come out with a perfectly clear sentence. It amazes me. It's as though all of the loose wires in her head connect.
It's astonishing when that happens, isn't it? It's almost frustrating, because you start to wonder "why can't she always do that?" It must be like a radio that isn't quite tuned in, but once in a while, the signal is crystal clear.
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