Thursday, May 31, 2012

A language of his own



My son could already make some verbal requests when he was two years old.  He invented words, and by trial and error we learned what each word meant.  Balloon, for example, is "daw-daw."  When my son wanted to watch the videos of the animated TV series "Noddy," he would tell me "Apukutch."  For the films featuring a dog named Beethoven, he would say "Bow-bow."  "Garfield" is "Afee."  This system worked for some time until autism began to erase his limited language.  It came to a point where he would cry aloud each time he wanted to watch a video as I was making a futile attempt to guess what he desired.  Eventually, we just had to let him pick the disc of his choice and assist him in operating the player to
prevent him from having a meltdown. 


For several months now, my son has slowly been learning to communicate again.  He now names the item or activity he prefers, although sometimes he uses his "own" language.  He asks for a coffee when he wants cocoa drink or a chocolate flavored beverage.  In coffee shops, restaurants, and convenience stores, many give me a puzzled look when they overhear him telling me "I want a coffee." To him any food from our kitchen that is round and brown is a cookie, so a pancake and a slice of canned meat loaf are cookies.  He used to call potato chips circles until a few weeks ago.  The round gummy candy with with a hole in middle is also a doughnut.  The Nutella spread is cheese.  The black bird in the Angry Birds game is an apple.


He also uses his own language to rename some of his favorite DVDs:  "horse" for "Tangled;" "mouse" for "The Tale of Despereaux;" and "daddy lion" for "The Wild." I watch the films with him so it's usually easy for me to guess which disc he is requesting.


It was deja vu when two months ago, after gaining enough token for a video watching reward, I found him rummaging the CD bags for "cat."  He whined when he saw me insert "Garfield" in the player.


"Calm down."  I ejected the disc.  I faced him and asked, "what do you want?"


"Caaaaaaaaaat! Caaaaaaaaaat!"  He began to whine again and I knew that a meltdown was brewing.


I frantically searched for a disc with a cat.  My wife suggested "The Emperor's New Groove."  She explained to me that one of the characters in the film turned into a cat.  She was right.  My son was indeed looking for the film about an emperor who became a llama, a film where one can also see squirrel, jaguars, scorpion, whale, and bird.


Last week at a video store in the mall my son picked a DVD of "A Bug's Life" from the shelf and gave it to his mom.  My wife bought it as a replacement for his damaged disc.  He handed me the sealed DVD case when we got home.  To avoid confusion in the future, I decided to teach him what name to use when requesting for this film, a name both of us can understand.


"Say, 'I want to watch bug.'"  I showed him the word "bug's." 


With knitted brows, he looked at me for an instant, peeked at the picture on the DVD case, and then turned his gaze elsewhere.  "I. . . I want a[sic] ant."

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