"Wet's Do Dis."

Each day when I pick Kate up from daycare, I ask her, "What did you do today, Kate?" and she always smiles and gives me a string of babble.  She has lots of words but she cannot answer a question, yet.  She can't tell me how her day went.  She is great at requesting things.  "Mama, I want turtles, wet's do dis." or "Mama, I go outside, wet's do dis" and some of the sentences are so long and detailed that Alex and I can't believe it came out of her mouth, eg. "Mama, I pwease tell you I want  hug now pwease, wet's do dis." Anything else she says is usually jibber jabber or unreliable.  So, I rely heavily on those that work with her each day.  They are great at patiently telling me the details of her day.  

Yesterday, when I picked up Kate and asked her the same question, she said, "No hitting, Kate."  I was pleased because in a way I think she was telling me how her day went.  Of course, I don't want her hitting the kids in her class but at least she was trying to share something with me.  I'll take what I can get.

If you work with children with communication difficulties,and that includes the vast majority of kids with autism, regardless of where they land on the spectrum, then please be cognizant of how removed their parents feel from their day. Remember, even children with large vocabularies can be unreliable with communication. Please share all of the good and some of the bad and even some of the mundane.  It means a lot.  

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