EIA - Questions

Continuing observations about my son as he interacts with the world through his autistic lens.

Everything is Ausome -- Questions



“How many pets do you have? What do you like to eat at picnic? Have you ever slept in a tent?"

"What is who?" Calvin sincerely asked me, seemingly out of the blue.

"Huh?"

"Daddy, what is who?"

I was outwardly quiet, but inwardly deliberating in my mind -- trying to sort out if I heard him correctly, while simultaneously trying to form a coherent answer for a third grader with communication challenges.

I started by repeating the question, a time-honored method for getting more processing time, "What is who? Hmm, Okay, Who is -"

Calvin matter-of-factly interrupted, probably wondering why I was so slow, "'Who' is about a person."

"Yes, good answer, 'who' is..."

And making sure I was fully informed my ausome student, he rattled off, "What is 'where'? What is 'what'? What is 'when'? What is 'why'?" He gave me his answers that were clear and showed his new intellectual comfort with questions.

Most of us absorb the give and take of questions in early childhood, but Calvin, living on the spectrum, did not naturally and easily grasp how questions worked. It was a communication wasteland.

He is making a turn around. Thankfully Calvin's days are filled with skilled teachers & expert speech pathologists, along with lots of patient family, classmates and adults. Including the stranger, next to him in a restaurant, who was asked, "How many brothers do you have?"

The man told him "Two." And the stranger shrugged and chuckled along with me at Calvin's unexpected inquiry. The three of us were, at the time, facing the wall and our urinals in the Applebee's men's room.

Once questions rolled off him like water spilled on a vinyl table cloth. The words were not an invitation to respond, but a blur of sounds in a hall of meaningless echoes.

Calvin has certainly learned the power of questions this year. It is a new gateway for him to engage with the world.

The W's words, once very mysterious to him, like a strange shaped tool that’s function seemed unfathomable to the non-carpenter have become useful. Now questions are his constant friends. Especially the "Questions of the Day" he learned in Room 108, his autistic support classroom.

Everyday this year, his 3rd grade year, in his sing-songy voice he cheerfully, yet dutifully, asks others questions he has learned. Over and over, over and over, again and again he rehearses like a musician practicing scales or a golf pro hitting buckets of balls at the driving range. Calvin knows that repetition is the key to mastery:

"How many pets do you have? What is your favorite summer treat? Have you ever been on a boat? Have you ever climbed a mountain? What do you like to eat at picnic? Have you ever built a snowman? (Thanks Disney.) Have you ever ridden a cow? Do you prefer a bath or a shower? Have you ever slept in a tent? Have you ever touched a frog?"

He has asked these and many dozens more just about every waking hour. He made a homemade handwritten book of eighty-some questions with his serious, but simple illustrations. He also has typed in the same list of questions into his iPad.

Today, Calvin was interviewed by Karen Hepp, Fox29 TV reporter, who came to see his soccer team. When asked by the reporter to answer her questions, he stepped up, leaned into the mic, listened and shared his perspective.

Someday, he might be asking others questions on TV some day.

Later at home before bedtime, I asked, "Calvin, What is 'how'?"

"How is about doing something!"

He knows he must do more than others as he pulls in his pillow, closes his eyes, perhaps, dreaming for another day of how.