Literal Thinking

I am unabashedly plagiarizing this idea (and my comment) from one of my favorite autism bloggers, Lisa Quinones Fontanes over at AutismWonderland.  In a recent post, she relates a story about how she discovered the extent to which her son, Norrin, who is just a bit older than Hallie, is a literal thinker.  In short, this is a problem that many with autism (often of the higher functioning, Aspergerian nature) have with metaphor.

Anyway, I was contemplating posting this before Lisa beat me to the topic (hey, at least I can say that I am frantically working away these days on an article and can use this as an excuse for why I am not keeping up with blogging; once I meet my self-imposed August 1 deadline for submitting said article I shall start using my need to write a conference paper and/or prepare for the upcoming semester as an excuse!).  But Lisa is, as I have already noted, an inspiration to us slacker/bloggers.  And so I leave you with this story:

Our literal moment of the month: I had taken the kids out for pizza one day last week. We were seated at the table in the pizzeria and everybody was happily eating lunch. I turned to Hallie and said, "Isn't it great that we are eating out today, kiddo?" She flashed me a puzzled look and replied, "But we're NOT eating out. We're eating inside." She continued, pointing to the tables outside on the street, "THEY'RE eating out. We're eating IN."

I guess the kid has a point; we really weren't outside!   And I just love it that she stood her ground and explained her perspective to me.  Every day, she's getting better at this, at answering questions appropriately, and at asking questions of us.