The magic word

"Mommy, I want something to eat."

It's a pretty basic sentence, probably spoken millions of times all over the world on any given day. So you might think it's odd that I'm writing an entire posting (and probably a long one) on how exciting it is for me to hear that sentence.

The magic is in the second word.

Yes, I know that the traditional "magic" word is "please." But if you happen to have much knowledge of autism, you know that "please" is easy to teach to these kids. It's one of those rote, memorized words that, quite frankly, those of us who are raising such kids would love to hear less of.

Whereas a pronoun -- such as "I" -- used correctly is not far short of a miracle.

Like many autistic kids, Elijah has a number of speech/language problems, the most frustrating of which is pronoun reversal. It's exactly what it sounds like: He calls himself "you" and other people "me." (A bit of unsolicited advice to anyone out there with an infant or young toddler: If, when your child begins speaking, he or she does this, don't laugh it off as something cute. Get that child evaluated for autism IMMEDIATELY. Trust me on this.)

The reason for this particular disability is actually very simple and has to do with the way people with autism learn language. Unlike the rest of us, who learn what individual words mean and how to arrange those words in various ways to form sentences, autistic kids learn language in chunks, often entire sentences at a time. It's called gestalt processing, and it makes for quite a few challenges in communication. For instance, when Elijah asks for milk, here's what he's been saying for the past eight or 10 months:

"You want vitamins in red and silver milk."

Actually, since he doesn't perceive these as separate words, it's more like "Youwantvitaminsinredandsilvermilk." He picked up this phrase one morning when either Jeff or I was pouring his milk into a red and silver sport bottle (his only acceptable vessel for the consumption of milk) and added a couple of liquid vitamin drops to it. That particular phrase was uttered in the form of a question posed to him, and it seared itself into his brain as what has to be said when he wants milk. This phenomenon is called echolalia. Once he gets a phrase in his head, he repeats it exactly the same way every time the situation comes up again, with identical intonation, pitch and syllable stress markers. In other words, he doesn't understand that phrases and sentences are made up of individual words that can be rearranged and spoken in a different tone to give different meanings.

And heaven help anyone who tries to explain that, despite what the boneheaded Mommy or Daddy said, the milk really isn't red and silver. The sport bottle is. The milk is white. See? Look right here! MILK IS WHITE!

This is especially frustrating when you consider that the kid started reading before age 2. (Another bit of unsolicited advice to parents of infants and toddlers: If your child begins reading before age 2 and is absolutely obsessed with letters and numbers, get him or her evaluated for, yes, autism. No, we didn't know either that these things are considered major red flags. If you don't believe me, go to Google right this second and type in "hyperlexia.") You'd think that any child who could read could clearly see that words are individual units that can be used in different ways. I've even tried writing each word of his many echolalic phrases on a separate flash card, then rearranging them to give him a visual representation of how language works. He'll have none of it.

This brings me to the pronoun reversal. Since Elijah has always heard people call him "you" while referring to themselves as "me," it only makes sense to him that he should call himself what other people call him. And there is no way to explain pronouns to someone who just doesn't get it, because you have to use so many actual pronouns in the process: "Elijah, when I talk to you, I call you 'you,' but when you talk about you, you should call yourself 'I.' And I call myself 'me,' but you can't call me 'me,' because when you say 'me,' it means YOU!"

Yeah, right.

So our attempts to correct this over the years have involved making him say the right words during what inevitably turns out to be a painful conversation like the following:

Elijah: "You want to sit on my lap."

Me: "Honey, please try to say that the right way."

Elijah: "I want to sit on my lap!"

Me: "That's almost right! Try again"

Elijah: "You want to sit on my lap."

And so on. The problem is, even when he gets it right, he doesn't really "get it." He's just parroting back an answer he was fed in an earlier coaching session. For instance, when he says something like "You want to go outside," I often say, "WHO wants to go outside?" His brain clicks on the fact that when I ask "who," I want him to say "I," which he is happy to do, even though calling himself "I" makes no sense whatsoever to him. But he'll do it just to humor Mommy so he can go outside. Which is fine, until the subject changes entirely:

Me: "Elijah, who sat next to you at circle time today?"

Elijah: "I sat next to me at circle time today!"

After all, "I" is the correct answer to questions beginning with "who," right?

It's all enough to make me want to ..... oh, I don't know, go sit at the computer and write a painfully long blog post about it.

But my reason for writing this is not to wallow in despair about my child's language disability. It's to CELEBRATE, because in the past two weeks we have made a major breakthrough in the pronoun struggle!

Don't ask me how or why. It could be something his therapist at preschool is doing. It could be the computer game he plays at his therapy sessions at the university that is specifically designed to address pronoun problems. It could just be the magic of turning 5 years and 3 months old. Or it could be the cumulative effect of three years of near-constant nagging (um, I mean, at-home therapy).

But whatever the reason, he suddenly seems to get it, at least when it involves simple sentences with just one first-person pronoun and one second-person pronoun. He's calling himself "I" or "me." He's calling other people "you."

He still slips fairly frequently, especially if he's tired or really excited, but the difference is huge. Just two weeks ago, his pronoun accuracy rate in a 45-minute therapy session at the university was just 20 percent. Last week, it was 80 percent. And the progress appears to be holding.

Of course, this is just one language battle, not the war. We have many battles to fight, including several more involving pronouns. Try a pronoun-laden sentence like this out for size:

I want YOU to take ME to the park so WE can play with THEM.

Think I'm gonna be hearing that from Elijah anytime soon? Not a chance. There's also not much of a chance that we'll be hearing correct gender pronouns soon -- Elijah can't fathom why some people are called "he" and others are called "she." The head of the university's speech/language department recently told me about a teenage boy she worked with who still doesn't get it. I don't even want to consider that possibility, so I just choose not to think about it!

Actually, I have reason to believe he will get the whole gender thing. This is based on a rather humorous conversation a few months ago that began with Elijah dashing into the bathroom just as I was stepping out of the shower. As one of those conservative mothers who began covering up when he was about 2, I was a little taken aback, but not nearly as taken aback as he was!

In the interest of good taste (as well as to preserve the dignity of both parties involved), I will not repeat our conversation verbatim here, but I will say that Elijah used anatomically correct terms to grill me about what he perceived as my anatomical INcorrectness. And I'll also say that he was quite worried about Mommy's well-being ("What happened to it? Did it got broke???!!!!)

It was hysterical, and actually I was quite proud of him, given that until he was about 4 1/2, he didn't have the language skills to ask even the simplest of questions. (My last bit of unsolicited advice to parents of infants and toddlers: When they go through that phase of asking "Why?" all the time, be grateful. Many of us have children who may never be able to ask why something is the way it is.)

So we are making progress. And if you happen to see me in line at the checkout counter, happily buying Hershey's bar just because my little boy said, "I want chocolate!", think twice before you jump to conclusions. A scene that, to you, looks like an overindulgent parent catering to the whims of a demanding child might actually represent a major developmental breakthrough for that child.

Remember, you don't know the back story.