The weight of his words

Last night the kiddo came out of his appointment with his speech therapist.  As he was wrangling himself into his coat, she shared a cute moment with him.  They have been working on descriptive words as a way to expand his sentence making.  He's starting to slowly get the concept of it but his literal autism mind made quite an appearance.

She wrote out the sentence.  "I will eat ice cream for dessert. The ice cream feels________. " Now to you, you might reply "cold".  The sentence before was about eating soup for lunch and how it was hot.  The kiddo's answer?

"The ice cream feels HAPPY!"

 Now I have to admit, a Dairy Queen ice cream sundae makes me feel happy on many occasions.  Especially when it's nice out and you can eat it outside. I swear ice cream always tastes ten times better when eaten outdoors. Anywho, we had a nice little chuckle about it but it reminded us both just how literal he takes any word spoken and how tough it can be to teach abstract concepts.  Last year in school, they really drove home the concepts of feelings.  I was pretty grateful for it in some ways because I could see it as 1) A good conversation starter "How are you?" or as we say in Jersey "How you doin'?" 2) He could actually tell me when he was upset and I wouldn't have to play the autism guessing game of what's going on with him.  I don't play that game very well.  I often lose. 

Now I realize I have to teach him about feeling feelings and about feeling things.  It's one of those moments where I wonder why they are trying to teach him Spanish in school too.  Really, he's having a hard enough time with English and didn't Dora the Explorer teach him all the Spanish he needs to know using Swiper and the big red chicken? 

I have to laugh when I think about another autism mom tweeting once "Don't take things so literally." and I wanted to tweet back "Does your kid actually live with you?" This is our whole life.  LITERALLY!!  Words have more weight to him than anyone else in my house.  If you have something to say, you better say what you mean and mean what you say.  My kiddo is the master loop hole finder.  Matlock would be reduced to tears by my son.  My husband was recently caught by the kiddo when he was thinking out loud to himself about POSSIBLE weekend plans.  I could of killed him.  It was like he was new here.  You can't discuss possible around the kiddo.  It's set in stone once it passes your lips!

All I know is, if you asked the kiddo if eating French Fries made him feel happy, he'd say yes to that too. :-)