Katherine has been doing very well verbally lately since Christmas break.  Whether the cause is the reduction in stress from not having school for three weeks or just the increased time at home with people who (mostly) understand her, she is doing substantially more spontaneous commenting and complex requesting.  Rather than just fall back on her stock “I want help” phrase, which can be maddening when she won’t specify what it is that she wants, she’s now using complex and sometimes synthetic terms for things she wants.

For example, the Baby Einstein Meet the Orchestra movie for a long time was “white baby movie”, which is a good description but doesn’t narrow it down from the other Baby Einstein videos, which also come in white cases.  Just recently she further specified it as “orchestra movie” which is much more clear to us.

She also got a new Littlest Pet Shop playset for Christmas, and has been referring to it as “animal playground”, which is a description she’s definitely synthesized herself, since we just recently opened that toy up for her and I’m sure she hasn’t heard it before.  In addition to that, she’s also getting mad if Thomas tries to horn in on her new toys, which is pretty developmentally appropriate even if it does cause more friction between them at times.

Along with this increased verbosity, however, is coming some willfulness when it comes to diet.  She’s almost completely given up orange juice, and she’s balking at certain types of meat that she’s liked just fine in the not-so-distant past.  This last time it was ham.

We had a very nice little boneless ham that we were serving up for supper.  It was very tasty and tender, and Katherine ate the first bite just fine.  After that, however, the response every time we tried to get her to go for a piece was “no ham!”  We tried most of the usual incentives to get her to eat it, such as offering a chocolate chip cookie for dessert if she finished the ham, and then sweetening the deal with potato chips.  Usually that will work to get her started, but not this time.  Every gambit was met with “no ham!” and strong resistance.

Finally, after several rounds of this, Katherine took the fork and held it up to Robin’s lips and said “Mom eat ham!”  So Robin did.  This, of course, caused a light to go on in Katherine’s mind and she tried it again, only to be rebuffed.  Only one “get out of ham free” card per person.  So she turned to me, with “Dad eat ham!”  This was then followed with “Thomas eat ham!”, but that still left several pieces left on her plate.  The dogs would have volunteered to help, but they were disqualified on the grounds of inhumanity, so she got creative.  She scanned the room, and noticed that I was holding Jonathan.  She got a big smile on her face.

“Baby eat ham!”

Unfortunately, we had to make it clear that Jonathan doesn’t eat food yet, and so he was unable to help her dispose of the rest of her meat.  But it was certainly fun watching her use her brain and creativity to solve her “problem”.

We did, by the way, get her to eat the rest of the ham.  I was able to convince her that by coating it in Parmesan cheese, ordinary ham is transubstantiated into a foodstuff known as “cheese ham”, and this was acceptable to her where plain ham was not.  She ate the cheese ham, moved on, and that was the last of it.

Tags: Autism, Jonathan, Katherine