Question:
My son is 5 and is finallybeginning to tell me things that he is thinking. A couple of weeks ago,he rambled off."Mommy, Whales, Dolphins, Dinosaurs, Sharks scared me. Can we go? Saywhy sure?" Most of his speak in unintelligible jargon like this, but Ican usually figure out what he is getting at by his lists of words.

He was talking about Marine World Africa USA in San Francisco. We wentthere last summer when he could barely speak. Recently, Mac Donalds hasbeen handing out $5 off coupons and he saw one and remembered the day wehad. So guess what we did last weekend? We went back to Marine Worldand he had a blast. He loved the Whale show the most and corrected hislittle brother when he called a Walrus a Seal. Verbatum he said, "NoKevin, that is not a seal. Actually, it is a walrus. Look at his teeth." We stood in shock.

Any comments???

Answer: This reminds me of something the first teacher who facilitated Jeremysuccessfully told me. I tried to get a validation by telling Jeremy to tellher our dog's name . He typed "black lab" (correct) and "dog she likesto be called King"--interestingly got the sex right and put it with anopposite sex name. But he never did get Sally out. She said that this wastypical of her kids in her class of children with autism --they would talkall around a subject but often had trouble with "word retrieval" which is aform of aphasia.By the way, did y'all know there's a word for not being able to laugh outloud? It's called aphonogelia