She cannot be reduced to a set of behaviours

Catching the Ninja in a dress and clutching a doll is a rare sight, indeed.

There are times when I look at her, with her righteous little haircut and her giant blue eyes and I think, if this is going to be our version of autism, it isn't so bad. I mean, should I even be writing about it? I could throw a piece of lego and hit someone more qualified to have this conversation, but here I am, still writing and for some reason, thankfully, you are still reading. She hasn't hit me or pinched me in weeks (I wish I could say the same about her little friends at school. For the record, she is sorry about that). She hasn't screamed bloody murder in public since Oakley joined our family and she has expanded her food list to include strawberries again. She's as happy as any of us and last night our bedtime routine was over and done in under twenty minutes. Life is good. Kate is good. We are good.

She looked at me today, her fists clutching two tiny cars that she will either run along her dog's back or drop into the toilet as soon as I dare to open a book, and she said: "Mama, did you make someone dead before?" 

At first I laugh, because face it, that's kinda funny (and creepy), and then I realize that I had been doing just what I despise. I had reduced her to a set of behaviours and when those behaviours settled for a time, I forgot about  the other supports she needs from us. Her miscommunication in that moment reminded me that she is still a little girl who is trying so hard to reach us and her path is blocked by misfirings in her brain. It took thirty minutes of conversation to realize that she was not asking me if I had ever committed murder but instead she wanted to know if I had ever known someone who had died. This is a concept that had likely been introduced to her in one superhero cartoon or another and she was working hard to understand it. I'm so glad I didn't dismiss her and her scary question because it was information she needed help to wrap her head around. She's still struggling but we are working on it.

She cannot be reduced to a set of behaviours.

Later, she asked her sister and her sister's friend if she could join them in a game of lego. They acquiesced, of course, partly because they love her and party because I was watching. The moment Kate sat down she changed their gentle game of building a shopping centre for their tiny lego ladies to browse in, into a game consisting of a tornado of dinosaurs ready to smash that shopping centre to smithereens. To Kate, this was brilliant and some of you would agree but, of course, the girls were less impressed. She doesn't yet understand how to join in play. She doesn't yet understand that she comes on too strong. She needs help here, too. She doesn't see their smiles fade when she asks to join them. She doesn't understand but we are working on it. I used re-direction to remove her from her destruction and the girls quickly had the Red Cross coming in to deal with the devastation and sort out their game. 

She cannot be reduced to a set of behaviours.

Kate is a lot of wonderful and puzzling things and I guess I just needed to be reminded of that this evening.

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