A National Poetry Month morning exercise inspired entirely by Oliver de la Paz’s "Autism Screening Questionnaire--Speech and Language Delay" (which you can also hear read by the poet at the link)—and by my incredible, gorgeous, brilliant son.
Getting ready for work and preparing to drop him off at the Montessori preschool which eventually became untenable to his thriving.
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1. Did your child lose acquired speech?
He has always been polylingual. I mean: he learned the language of puppies, cats, eagles, furred creatures he admired. The march of the penguins—his tears when the daddy penguin dropped the egg. The words moved from his mouth to his fingers, shimmering, twinkling, circling the brown curls of his head.
2. Did your child produce unusual noises or infantile squeals?
He laughs with his whole body: it is as if the laugh lives inside him, inseparable from every nerve ending. A full-bodied laughter. He doesn’t point to things. Is this the question? What am I answering? He likes quiet. Unusual noises scare him. Football and fireworks scare him a lot. We try to leave town on those weekends.
3. Is your child’s voice louder than required?
I think I mentioned it is loud where we live. I never realized how loud lawnmowers and leafblowers could be, the endless screaming of inhuman machines. Given the surrounding sounds, his voice is very loud—his teachers say disruptive. My friends say: shouting. It is loud enough so he can hear himself speak over the noises in his head. My child’s voice is as loud as required. He could be a sportscaster, really.
He presses his invisible volume button when he needs to lower his voice in public spaces. The button is located right above his heart. Sometimes he presses it so intensely that he mutes himself.
4. Does your child speak frequent gibberish or jargon?
He loves to sing. He sing-songs. He uses his voice to untangle the sounds inside a word from their shell. Did you realize each word has a shell around it? He opens each one carefully, slowly, with his mouth. And then he repacks it. He puts the soft sounds back into the hard shell. He will do this for hours. Often he uses his fingers and hands to help.
5. Does your child have difficulty understanding basic things (“just can’t get it”)?
The toilet is connected to a series of underground pipes that swallow things. He has shown me this with a drawing. He puts toilet paper into the bowl and flushes with one hand over his ear, the other ear laying against his shoulder. It is true that the toilet paper disappears.
He started kindergarten late as a result. He was only fully potty-trained at six, and he will not use the school restroom. At home, he goes into the backyard, crouches near a tree to use the bathroom, the sparrows chairing overhead.
He cries and covers his ears when toilets flush. Always.
He says animals are his best friends. He trusts dogs and looks deep into their eyes. He does this even after one bites him on the ear and draws blood. I worry so much when people walk their dogs and he runs up to touch them. I worry those people don’t understand dogs are his best friends. I worry the dogs will hurt him again.
6. Does your child pull you around when he wants something?
He takes my hand to show me the ice cream. He stares at the freezer door until I open it. Then he looks directly at the ice cream and waits. The connection between our fingers which becomes a connected gaze is actually a blanket. We wrap ourselves in the blanket and eat birthday cake ice cream on the couch. Oh no—is that bad?
7. Does your child have difficulty expressing his needs and desires using gestures?
He takes my hand. He looks at things and waits. He crumples up on the floor when he is frustrated. After aligning all the ketchup and condiment bottles on the kitchen floor, he dances around them. Fingers twinkling. His eyes twinkle when his fingers twinkle in the air. The joy on his face is incredible—he knows what he needs to assemble it. He knows his joy’s patterns. The bottles, the trains arranged by color and size along the edge of a rug. His hands dancing, dancing.
8. Is there no spontaneous imitation of speech or communication from your child?
I don’t know what you mean. I know what he means. I know others don’t know what he means as I do not know what you mean by this question. Is this an answer? It feels like we aren’t communicating.
9. Does your child repeat words, parts of words, or tv commercials?
He repeats everything sing-songy. He loves vowels and fricatives. He repeats everything and takes it apart with such tenderness. Like a tiny monk studying the matins, the motion of music toward song. He chants a lot.
10. Does your child use repetitive language (same word or phrase over and over)?
Yes! Yes! He’s been doing this more and I read in a book that repetition is how kids learn new words so I’m excited and hopeful about his vocabulary. He loves repeating alphabet flashcards. He does it by himself. He sits in his teddy chair and repeats flashcards for hours. And train words. And “Outside.” He says “Outside” thirteen times in a row when he wants to go swing. He sings it. He sings it and stares at the window.
11. Does your child have difficulty sustaining a conversation?
Not with himself. He has monologues. He meanders into new places with them. Twinkling places. But he won’t answer questions unless they are related to trains. Or bottles. Or whatever is fascinating him at that moment.
12. Does your child use monotonous speech or wrong pauses?
I don’t know. I mean, yes. I mean he recites what is happening in his mind as if I am not there. When he is finished, he crawls into my lap and repeats the word mommy. I mean a word is an island that protects him from all the other words and mean kids at school.
13. Does your child speak the same to kids, adults, or objects (can’t differentiate)?
Yes. He was born egalitarian—he doesn’t he see status or authority or prestige or charisma. He loves puppies and penguins.
Last week, I had to leave work and get him from school because the principal said he was acting hysterically. In that office, he was so tiny, sitting in a large leather chair, his cheeks reddened, his eyes rimmed by tears. The principal said he disrespected a teacher and refused to apologize. He looked up at me, his lower lip trembling: “No, mommy, no. No no no. The teacher said dinosaurs were 2,000 years old. No no no mommy. The teacher lied. Lied lied lied.”
I took him home. He wouldn’t apologize until the teacher took back what she said. The teacher would not take it back. I’m not sure what will happen with school. I can’t differentiate between respect, apology, and fact.
14. Does your child use language inappropriately (wrong words or phrases)?
He said I love you for the first time recently. He said it to a tiger at the zoo. He stared through the bars and said, “Tiger, I love you.” He was so happy. His fingers danced around his eyes.