Our Son Talks to Us Now
Our oldest son did not exhibit overt signs of autism during the first couple years. He played with us, laughed, and showed all signs of being a happy, healthy child. It wasn't until he was about 2-1/2 years old that we noticed some things were different. I can't say precisely which symptom I noticed first, but I remember the incredible tantrums that came seemingly from nowhere and the growing obsession with ordering things and the unusual play. He would gather all of our shoes, every single one, and arrange them in unusual designs all over the house, or he would line them all up in a row. This wasn't a game where he laughed and tried to get us to play with him; in fact he seemed to retreat and wanted to be alone. At first we thought it was cute that he was so focused and used his toys in creative ways, but then we quickly realized this wasn't just play because no one was allowed to touch the shoes. If anyone bumped the shoes accidentally, he would launch into a huge screaming tantrum or try to hurt his brother then quickly repair the damage. Calming him down took a long time. Trying to get him to clean up and put them away became a nightmare of tears and screaming every single day. And he couldn't explain to us what he was doing. When we tried to engage him and ask what he was making, he just glanced at us out of the corner of his eye and kept arranging and building.
After several months of this, we finally managed to redirect his interest to blocks and plastic containers. We save all of our cottage cheese, yogurt, and sour cream containers for other uses, and we let him play with those. Just as he did with the shoes, our son grouped and categorized the blocks and containers and made nonrepresentational sculptures that went all over the house, stacking the blocks and containers in complex, creative ways. When our boys got some Thomas the Tank Engine trains and track for Christmas, he did not play with the trains by rolling them around the track. Instead he took all of the track and continued making sculptures all over the house, precariously balancing three or four pieces of track on top of each other. He still could not talk about what he was doing and he stopped making eye contact and he started pacing and talking softly to himself.













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