Conversations with My Girl

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We were talking about her end of year show at school at lunch one Saturday.  She was saying Hakuna Matata, in her sing songy voice.  I said to her Hakuna Matatta; you're going to be in the Lion King Show,
She said:  I'm concerned
Me:  About being on stage or knowing the words?
SensiGirl:  Knowing the words
It was great that she told me about her worries and it was amazing that she could tell me what they were. This is a far cry from preschool when we really didn't have much conversation at all.

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Two weeks later we are waiting for the bus. It was a particularly cloudy day. She says "C,D,E, clouds. I am looking at my front garden thinking of what I have to weed and prune next, I didn't look. I just said "Yes C is for clouds and d is for damp..." She says to me C,D,E CLOUDS, LOOK! and points to the clouds in the sky. I looked.

If you have a kid with autism, you know that one of the stumpers for communicating with them when they are young is lack of joint attention. Part of conversation is sharing, joint attention is sharing. She hasn't shared something so pointedly with me outdoors before. I am just amazed at all the progress she is making. I am so happy she shared the beauty of the dark and light puffy clouds with me. I tried to share that a year ago, and she would not look with me.

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This weekend the Atomic Punk bought some of Rory's Story Cubes. Random Guy and I took turns telling stories from the cues on the cubes. SensiGirl wouldn't join in so we let it go. Later when the guys went to run errands, SensiGirl told me some stories of her own. SensiGirl chose a page from her book "Saying What You Mean" she told me the names of the characters she made up for each figure and then described what instrument they were playing. She told me the story about the four band mates a few times. She also told me the names of all her plastic animals. 

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On Saturday, she thought it was so funny when her Daddy burped letters. She was asking, "Daddy, burp an O!"  He did and she cracked up and then paused to say "That's so funny!" then laughed some more. I think she's starting to get the hang of this story telling and conversation thing.