Friday, November 09, 2007

Questions

There was a good sale downtown today. One our favorite stores is going out of business. That happens when teh world prefers Walmart. But I digress.

When Joey came home and Andy awakened from his nap (wow... he took a nap!), we (Grandma and I) loaded them both into the car, and headed for the shop. We spent some time explaining about going Christmas shopping and that sort of thing, the usual banter to prepare Joey for an unexpected outing, especially on a Friday (his afternoon off, when he prefers to stretch out on the livingroom floor and watch something preferred, such as Little Bear or Cars.) We've been having some trouble with Joey. He's been eching some phrases that have resulted in us emailing the teachers several times to ask what's happening at school- phreases like, "Stop talking now!" and "Eat your breakfast and leave!" and "You're going to Mrs. T!" [this is a reference to being sent to the principal's office]. This week, he's been parroting these things at the bus aide, who was rather upset this morning, to the point I had to remind Joey to be respectful and behave himself on the bus. Joey loves the bus. What's going on? Anyway, theres been a lot of echoing, a lot of motor-mouth lately, and now we're disturbing his schedule again to get 20% off of a bunch of stuff we don't need and possibly polish off my Christmas shopping list.

From the back seat, a musical little voice wafted:

"Where are we going?"

I automatically replied, "Down to the shop, hon."

Fortunately, we stopped at a stop sign. I looked at Grandma. Grandma looked a me.

Joey asked us a question.

There was no prompts, no cajoling, no setting up. It was a question, like any other five-year-old suddenly whisked from his house into the car and heading down the street. Where are we going? Perfectly natural question, especially if you weren;t really paying attention to teh jabber of your mom, talking about Christmas and stuff. Oh, we're going to the shop. OK. He was satisfied.

We were left to collect our teeth from the floorboards.

9 comments:

Chaoticidealism said...

Go Joey!! *cheers*

I wonder if he likes the feel of making sounds? Maybe he's echoing people just 'cause it feels nice.

Casdok said...

Wow!!!
I bet you smiled all day!

Maddy said...

Fabulous! I know the echolalia can be a little disconcerting, especially if you couple it with the scripting and the endless repeats. These days, I think of all of it as 'practice /excercise' as well as calming and organizing for my guys. Maybe there are some similarities there, but the coherent sentence that emerges from the noisy motor mouth machinations can still knock me out.
Best wishes

VAB said...

I read somewhere that advances in language are often preceded/accompanied by spikes in echolalia. That has been consistently true with our guy. It's a weird one (I can't figure out the whys and wherefores) but it should make us a little happier when the echolalia level goes up -- although I must admit that I always remember about it AFTER the advance in language, when it's too late to remind myself that the echolalia is severing a purpose and so I should not let myself be driven crazy by it.

In any case, congratulations to both of you!

Niksmom said...

Way. Cool. And I'm fascinated by what VAB wrote. I'll have to try to file that away and remember it if/when Nik gains language and is driving me crazy! LOL

Usethebrains Godgiveyou said...

What other people take for granted...
is what we celebrate!

Joey's going to get there. Hearing about him reminds me SOOOOO much of Ben. I know anything he said had to come from somewhere. Think of it as his way of telling you what's going on at school.

Hmmmm......

Stimey said...

That's totally cool! Congrats to Mr. Joey.

Marla said...

Yes! I was thrilled when Maizie began asking questions! I hope the echoing of school stuff is not a problem. I have had that happen too.

Club 166 said...

The moment of enlightenment in a Zen Buddhist's life is often described as occurring while they are doing something very ordinary.

So, too, leaps in development for our kids often occur during very ordinary undertakings. Perhaps the ordinariness of asking a question actually highlights how extraordinary it actually is.

Joe