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Benjamin asked to watch a DVD. It's amazing. I'm so happy how far he has come with language skills. He is actually finding utility with his words. He came up to me with his movie of choice and said, "ba-de-bi-de." That's what i call "Benjamese" for "Bob the Builder."
When his mom came in, he expanded his request to, "I want ba-de-bi-de!"
So I turned on the video as demanded. We are pretty accomodating with this language thing.
One of Benjamin's favorite books right now is Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See. Here, I'm reading it to him. You can hear him say the names of most of the animals too. Quite fun.
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Benjamin loves iPhone/iPod touch. No, I don't think Apple had autistics in mind when they designed them. But that's just it. Apple designed it so intuitively, practically anyone can fiddle with it and figure it out without instruction.
One morning, after my shower, I found him in his room, playing with his mom's iPod touch. He swiped it out of our room, turned it on, unlocked it, navigated through the home screen, found his favorite applications, and launched it (currently either Banner and Peanut Butter Jelly Time). He probably did this multiple times on this morning because he likes the transition between the home screen and the app when it's launched. But we still have to supervise him. It might actually make sense to set up a pass key to discourage him from swiping it. Then again, that might backfire.
Here he is using my iPhone:
So far, there are only two things I have to really watch him on. First, he still likes to put things in his mouth, especially objects he really likes. This hasn't happened yet, that I'm aware of. Second, he tends to accidentally get the home screen into "uninstall/move" mode. The main reason this happens is because sometimes he doesn't realize his other fingers are touching the icons. Touching the icons on the home screen for more than a couple seconds causes it to switch into this mode. When this happens, all the icons shake and non-Apple apps can be removed by tapping the X. He hasn't managed to uninstall anything yet.
There is a feature in the Settings that allows Restrictions on various features. It'd be nice if "uninstall" was one of the listed restrictions, but it's not as of OS version 2.2.1.
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Benjamin (now six) has made a lot of progress this year. It reminds me of the progress he made prior to his sister's birth.
Back then, he had several favorite words and a growing vocabulary. This time, the number of words might actually be uncountable. Not really, but it seems like it. This is because it seems like he has finally connected the utility function of words. Where before, his words seemed more like a 1 to 1 cause and effect, "If I say this, I get that," now he seems to be thinking in those words instead, which is a vast improvement.
Previously, I eluded to the new words he has related to with LazyTown. It is expanding. Before, it was just the word "dancing" relating to the song "Bing Bang." He really likes "Bing Bang." Now, he has connected "cake" to the song "Cooking by the Book." He comes up to me and says either "dancing" or "cake" and won't stop until I repeat it to him also.
I think he assumes this is how communication is done. Say it over and over until the other person says it. That's how we talk to him, so it makes sense he'd return in much the same way.
Instead of flailing his arms and grunting, he's coming up with words about 25% of the time now. This is all new behavior within the last three months. He is also closely following the "what's next" question with the correct answer as long as it's a routine thing. If it's not routine, he has no idea.
This is unlike Hannah (almost three) who is able to connect the "what's next" question with mere abstract ideas she has heard of. Once, Hannah got a flower from someone, and a random person told her how pretty it was and how she should put it in a vase when she got home. Hannah was shy with this person implying she perhaps didn't absorb the information but insisted on a vase when she got home. She never did that before with a flower but she had the procedure down.
So it's interesting to see where they both are. I can ask Hannah questions like "What does Mommy say?" The answer according to Hannah is, "She talks."
"What does a doggie say?" "He goes ruff."
"What does a cow say?" "He goes mooooooo."
"What does a kitty say?" "He goes meow."
And when asked, "What does Benjamin say?" She answers, "Eeeeeeeee!!" while flailing her arms. She speaks fluent "Benjamese," such that we have to remind her to talk like Hannah quite often indeed.
This has resulted in Hannah requesting that Daddy talk like Daddy, though I'm not sure what she heard that made her think I wasn't talking like Daddy.
It's an amazing contrast to witness. Right now, the juxtaposition is that Hannah can spell cake (due to all the birthdays this month and people trying to be covert around the kids) and Benjamin can say cake. Ok, Hannah doesn't know she's spelling cake, per se. She just thinks it's a long word for the same. "Can I have some cay-ay-kay-ee?"
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One of Benjamin's teachers recommended getting some pictures for him to trace to help get him interested in coloring. Part of the problem is he isn't making the connection with the pictures we want him to color. They aren't familiar and he doesn't care to engage.
He really loves a video Karen found on YouTube that has a picture for each letter of the alphabet. The song is popular at Benjamin's various schools, "Alphabet Sounds" sung by Barbra Miline. The video version is excellent, only for one minor thing: they use lower case letters. This does not detract from Benjamin's extreme interest in the video. But Benjamin does observe the letters and confused the upper case "I" with the lower case "l" when he sees the "Lion" slide. To me, the fact that he confused them is great. It means he is connecting the letters to the image. Wonderful progress.
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Today, Benjamin waved. I know it doesn't impress anyone to find out a five-year-old waved, but as you may recall, Benjamin has been diagnosed with autism, and it's the first time I can recall him ever doing it. In addition, he was waving backwards, such that his palm was facing himself. This is very typical of how kids start off waving.
As I mentioned before, he has been reaching a number of early childhood milestones, lately. This is interesting because he largely skipped most of them. Actually, the accurate way to describe it is he just never reached them in the first place, so now he's finally getting around to it.
The really great milestone lately is that he has been copying a lot. This is completely new behavior. Here's something Karen noticed him copying:
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Benjamin is a bit of an enigma sometimes. He has autistic symptoms but more than that. Benjamin has always been delayed in things like gross and fine motor skills, and from what Karen and I have read, there's very little to link delayed motor skills with autism. It has been brought to my attention that new studies have just recently linked lower gross motor skills with autism, but there is not a lot of data. These studies look at children after they have been diagnosed with autism and found that some (20% or so) have lower muscle tone. It's exciting to see studies like this because it does point to Benjamin, but not entirely.
For example, he has just now started playing with blocks by stacking them. Neurotypical children (like his sister) tend to play with blocks like this at about two years. It's not a rule, just a tendency. Benjamin is five (six in March) and he has stacked blocks in school under direction from teachers, but this new behavior is different. He gets out the blocks and spends hours stacking them, knocking them down, and stacking them again. His approach to them seems almost like problem solving. He seems like he's stacking them to see how high he can get. On the carpet, he doesn't get more than five or six. Knowing Benjamin, he'll be stacking blocks until he's seven, then he'll move on to the next stage.
So while a one-year-old can stack blocks, a two-year-old typically plays by stacking blocks. Developmentally, in this particular area, Benjamin has been one, and now he is developmentally two (with blocks, anyway).
Benjamin has always shown progress like this. He takes a long time to reach a developmental milestone, then he camps there for a very long time. This is why I've always had hope. It might take him longer than most children, but he will get there with time. He has always progressed, just not at the speed people like.
It seems like he started getting interested in blocks after one of his favorite electronic toys broke from overuse. There's a lesson there for us, I suppose. Or maybe that was just a coincidence.
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