Had a breakthrough moment of understanding, regarding a speech therapist's explanation of "context" and how it affects *Lightning McQueen's speech. I was describing how we drove by my old high school and I casually mentioned, "Hey look, there's where Mommy went to school when Mommy was little." As usual, I quickly regretted trying small talk with her. All she heard was "school." And yelled about school: "No, I don't want to go to school! I don't want to!" Again I tried to explain what I meant: "A long time ago, when Mommy was little, Mommy went to school just like you do." Again, total misunderstanding: "No! I'm not little! I'm not!"
sigh.....
I described all this to one of our speech therapists and she mentioned something about context, and how with autism, there is an even greater difficulty in perceiving context. I was bent on finding out more about receptive language problems, so what she said seemed too simplistic--until the next day when I saw "context," or lack of it, in action.
My daughter was looking at a book across the room from me. She began pointing to something on a page and repeating, "What's that?" again and again. I was washing dishes and could not see the book. "Show me," I kept encouraging her to hold up the book and show me the page. I never left my spot or moved closer, just kept trying to get her to hold the book so I could see it. I got her to hold the book up all right, but she would not turn it around so the page was facing my direction. I said, "Turn it around." And all that made her do was turn it upside down, but still facing her! aagghh! She just could not for the life of her understand why I do not have x-ray vision in order to see THROUGH the book to the thing on the page she was pointing to. She finally got up and walked over to me, with the book, still holding it so only she could see it, and tapping her finger on the page where she wanted me to look, and looking at me expectantly like, "Well? What is it?"
Yeah...so absolutely no ability to imagine another person's perspective, at all. No context whatsoever. Her only context is her own. If she's not in it, it doesn't exist--or like the Mommy going to school conversation, she places herself in all contexts because in her mind, she IS her own universe. It's the "inner world" thing. To her, there is nothing else.
But I'm still not sure why social stories don't work on her. We have one about "the weekend." All she does is see a picture of herself and the school building and doesn't seem to comprehend the message of the story: that it's the weekend; there is no school. I think even a social story is still too abstract for her right now. She loves books and is either interested in the pictures or the words (like anything fun to say over and over again), but does not seem to put both together or understand the message or plot. For instance, with The Grouchy Ladybug by Eric Carle, she likes the pictures of the ladybug and other animals, and LOVES to go around asking everyone and anyone, "Hey, do you wanna fight?"--but she has no clue that the message of the book is that fighting does NOT make the ladybug happy and it is not a good way to make and keep friends. Great...thanks a lot Eric Carle.
[*that's the persona she wore to bed tonight, but was "Pickle" all day at school]
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