Tag Archives: politeness

One Moment, Please

You would think that your constantly-eating teenage son would come running when he hears the words, “Dinner’s ready!” Especially since you have resigned yourself to only prepare the foods that he will eat because he is thin and needs all the food he can get. So he doesn’t have to worry about coming to the table and seeing something he might not like. Why then, when you say, “Dinner’s ready!” does he growl in response, “That fast?!” This is after the five-or-ten-minute transitional warning that you have learned to always give him. You always say, “Dinner’s in five [or ten] minutes!” and make sure that he hears you, so that he can prepare himself mentally for the transition and finish up what he’s doing. Yet every day, without fail, he will sneer, “That fast?!” when you tell him that dinner is ready, even though he has had his advance notice.

And every day, you model a more appropriate response for him. “Okay, Mom” or “Be right there!” You tell him that he should respond more politely to someone who prepares a meal for him. But somehow the appropriate responses don’t seem to register. He doesn’t get it. For years now, he has said, “That fast?!” in a negative tone, and it just seems to be a habit for him. And you worry about him doing that at any friend’s house where he might actually be invited to have dinner. You worry that in the “politeness vs. difficulty with transitions” fight, politeness will always lose.

But, much to your surprise, the day will come when you will say, “Dinner’s ready!” at his bedroom door, and he, seated at his computer desk, will politely say, “One moment, please.” And you will just about fall over dead from the shock. And when you recover, you will think that he really must be up to something in there to be that polite. So you poke your head in and check, and he’s not doing anything out of the ordinary. So you praise him for being polite, but you don’t want to overdo it or that will exasperate him and then he will never be polite again. And you can’t help but wonder if this is just a one-time deal, if he had by chance recently watched a movie that featured that line when a character announced that a meal was being served and the scene was still fresh in his mind.

And the next day when you tell him that dinner’s ready, he says nicely, “Okay, Mom.” And you thank him and then just stand there in the hallway and think, Wow! He’s getting it! And the next day when you tell him he says, “I’ll be there in a minute.” And you start to hyperventilate because he’s been polite three days in a row. And the fourth day, you tell him when dinner’s ready, and he growls at you, and you realize that you had forgotten the 5-10 minute “warning.” So at least now you know that your transitional cue really helped, even though all this time it appeared to not make a difference. The next day, you remember the “warning,” and you tell him that dinner will be ready in five minutes. And he helps.To set. The table. And after you pick yourself up off the floor, you realize that even though he still needs help with transitions, he is finally learning to respond politely. Yeah. He’s getting it.

Words Best Left Unspoken

Language acquisition is, of course, not just about learning to talk. Non-verbal communication is another confusing realm that autistic people must enter if they wish to interact appropriately.

Initially, Nigel’s non-verbal communication skills were limited to how he could make his needs known non-verbally, since he was not functionally verbal until about age 7. He could talk prior to that age, but most of the words that he spoke were echolalic. If he wanted me to get him something out of the refrigerator, he would take hold of my hand and lead me to the refrigerator and put my hand on the door handle. I would have to guess what he wanted, and a wrong guess would be met with a scream. This was the extent of his non-verbal communication at the time.

He progressed to using PECS, both for his expressive and receptive communication, which was a blessing for both of us, reducing the screaming at least while at home (in public, with his extreme sensory issues, the screaming continued). Once he started uttering one-word need-based requests, his use of PECS at home decreased, and then he moved on to two- and three-word combinations. At that point, the concept of non-verbal communication changed from expressive to receptive.

He started making eye contact. It was fleeting, of course, at first, and only reserved for family members and the most familiar of therapists, but it was there. He started to notice and interpret facial expressions, mostly limited to smiles, but gradually he could interpret the more obvious manifestations of sadness and anger. His favorite one to interpret, still to this day, is tiredness with its unmistakable yawn. “Go sleep?” he would say at age 6. Now, at 13, we hear the beautifully correct and appropriate, “Are you tired?” and even “Why are you putting your head on the desk?”

Nigel’s greatest accomplishment with interpreting non-verbal communication still astounds me, and always will. It happened about six months ago, when his NT friend Riley was at our house for a sleepover. Earlier that week, Nigel had seen me taking my daily birth control pill and asked what it was. I told him in simple terms that it prevented babies from forming in my uterus. Riley’s mother had had a baby a year and a half ago, and now Riley was telling us that his mother was going to have another baby. My sixth sense kicked in, or mother’s intuition, and I knew that the wheels were quickly turning in Nigel’s head. I was seated at the other end of the dinner table from him, and I looked at him fiercely, willing him to look at my wide eyes telling him Don’t say it! Don’t say what you’re going to say! And he started to say, “She should’ve –” and abruptly stopped as soon as he saw my face. It was the first time he caught himself before making an inappropriate comment because he had successfully interpreted non-verbal communication! I was so relieved, and equally amazed. Later I talked with him about the fact that I was glad he stopped himself from saying, “She should’ve taken birth control pills!” I told him that would not have been a polite thing to say. “But I don’t like ‘polite,'” he said, which is what he says when he doesn’t understand something’s purpose. At least if he can continue to interpret non-verbal communication (and not just his mother’s), he stands a chance of learning what’s not polite, and avoiding it.