I love it when ds1 does stuff like this

[jimjamshaslefttheyurt]

So we're waiting for the bus, watching Bobinogs. It cuts to a scene of a park and the little boy goes on the swing. DS1 likes swings, so starts pointing and saying 'ing' and we have a bit of back and forth ing ing ing.

Then off he runs to the kitchen and comes back carrying a bottle of cordial. I thought he wanted some, - he was pointing at it and shouting, then I realised there was a small (abstract) picture of a swing on there (which if course I'd never noticed before).

Cracks me up every time.

He's got a real artist's eye hasn't he for that sort of thing?

ha ha I'm not sure about an artist's eye (I can't remotely draw and nor can dh ). I think it's probably a bit of evidence for 'weak central coherence' though (always think its sad that something so clever is a deficit iyswim!)

DS1 does this too - The Thomas books have minatures of all the other Thomas books on the back cover. They are very small but he loves looking at them and commenting on everything he can see in the tiny pictures. I think that's common in autism - not seeing the big picture but loving the details.

Oh I know that technically it be put down as an ASD "symptom" in terms of focussing on details instead of whole picture. But I think that sort of observantness is bloody impressive.

I agree TC. It was something said at a talk last week as well about how with severely autistic kids/adults you might only see the cleverness in the form of a tantrum (because something is 'wrong').

My favourite one recently was setting off to visit some friends who were staying in a cottage in Cornwall. We'd last seen them 2 years ago when they were staying in a different cottage in Cornwall.

Told the kids where we were going, piled in the car. Reached the first roundabout in Cornwall and drove straight on - ds1 started screaming the place down, hammering on the window and pointing right. I said to dh 'er dh is that the turn off for Bude?' (Bude was a good 2 hours drive away from that turn off). Yes it was. So quick 'no ds1. they're in a different cottage this time' and peace was resumed.

So he'd memorised a route from 2 years ago for a 2 + hour journey.

DH was muttering 'I can't remember where their last cottage was, I'd never have worked that one out'.

I'm getting a into a roll now but I remember when ds2 was just starting to talk aged about 3 and I was shocked at how hopeless he was at spotting my mother's car. We'd be driving around and he'd see a different make car, of different size and shape and a different shade of red and say 'ooh look it's granny's car'.

DS1 would never make that mistake. He's gone ballistic before because friend's arrived after not seeing us for over a year - he ran upstairs to check out the window for their car and couldn't see it (they'd bought a new one). Peace again resumed after a trip into the street to show him the new car.

Hah! hes good isn't he! Astonishing memory!
Oddly ds used to be similar - creating if we passed a route to somewhere he liked, recognising specific cars ( even if driven by partner). Oddly recently he has started to point at other same colour but not identical cars to mine and say mummys car! So is this perhaps progress for ds - ie he's getting the forgetfulness of the rest of us -it feels like a retrograde step.

Oh yes that's probably a good sign. Switching to global processing or something!

I need to wait for ds1 to lose his perfect pitch before he'll talk

with DS - between the ages of 2 and 3 social development/language skills stagnated (or if anything went slightly backwards). But he did become a whizz at jigsaws (doing up to 35 piece ones). As his speech has improved he has lot a lot of interest in jigsaws, and isn't really doing harder ones than when he was 2. So I wonder if that could be a "global processing" issue - or just a weird developmental spike.

Am I right in thinking that 'ing' is also a forward step?

Oh overlooked the 'ing'! - sounds promising JJ swing and mummy!

He clearly has a photographic memory.

Is this something that could be beneficial with you teaching him to read etc?

oh crap still namechanged sorry.

ing has been around for a long time (it's mainly a vowel sound so he can say it iyswim, consonants are the no-no).

It helps with memory activities ispy (which are part of the curriculum) but I think lack of language (and dreadful behaviour) remains his biggest problems.

We have called ds1 'satnav' in the past(yes ds1 that was the way to the dentists when you were 2, but you're 6 now and we're going somewhere else!) and left/right came very early with him.
I sometimes feel overwhellmed when I realise how much of him is the autistic part of him.

ha ha, we had the same with the dentists. I forgot to tell him he had changed dentist. Oh my goodness, there was much unhappiness in the car when I went the 'wrong' way.

sorry I posted that without finishing. I agree that that sort of thing with the swing is so clever and positives do come symptoms of the syndrome - people are always very flattered by ds1's recall of their birthday, not so much by his recall of every pair of glasses they've evr worn.

Both Ds1 and I have got good long term and rote memories. I can remember a dream I had when I was 3 or 4, thoughts and feelings I had as an under five year old. Before the age of about 7 or 8 the vast majority of my memories are for fairly trivial things, eg looking at a yellow flower pattern on a carpet, looking at my feet on some cobbles, looking at my Grandad's thumb. Now I still focus on small things around me, I'll zoom in on a letter on the front of a book for example, or I'll find my eyes drifting towards a speck of dirt on a window sill. DH says I'm one of the most unobservant people he knows, but it's not that I don't notice anything (and if I have to I will direct my attention to a wider sphere) it just feels more comfortable and natural to look at bits and bobs. I can recall a lot of rhymes and poems as well.
Ds1's language isn't developed enough for him to be able to tell me what he remembers or thinks, but I know he's got a good memory and good visual awareness. He can read at least some letters upside down for a start, can do a puzzle by memorising where each piece goes after one go, can repeat back quite long stories and songs and remembers people and places.

DS1 is as you know non-verbal. When he was 2 one of his favourite toys was a shape sorter and he memorised the names of the shapes and approximated their sounds. The shape sorter went missing when we moved house. Found again aged 4. He saw it, asked me to empty the shapes, picked up the trapezium and said 'da dee dium'

No hello, no goodbye no ye and no no. But trapezium.

He could read a little when he was 2 as well. And as a baby he used to turn books upside down and kill himself laughing (stupid nursery he was at then said he didn't 'understand' which way round the book was meant to go, they didn't notice that he was only killing himself laughing when it was upside down).

bullet I often wonder about how ds1 remembers things. He must have remembered the cordial bottle this morning, but I wonder how close to the surface it is, or whether it's just triggered by the image of a swing. Does he have a set of swing memories. I saw Temple Grandin talk last week and I think sh was saying that's how her memory works.

DD has amazing memory, usually triggered by visuals. Also good spatial awareness - even as a tiny baby would get grumpy if I put the car in reverse, or turned around and started going back the same way (parking a nightmare BTW). The other day she was talking about "baby's head on the screen" and it wasn't until she added "there's the babies heart, hear the babies heart" that we realised she was talking about 22 wk scan for DS who is now 15 months old. DD could do tupperware shape sorter aged 10 months and name all the pieces aged 18 months. DS aged 15 months is only just starting to show an interest. Sometimes it's the fact that DS seems "slower" than DD, i.e more normal, that makes me think he's probably NT ! (Well, and the fact he waves and is clingy...) The other day I said we were going to a friend's house where we hadn't been for about 3 months and she said "go on the daisy toilet". Sure enough, when we got there, there is a tiny pattern on the toilet roll holder that to a visually aware child could be said to resemble a daisy!