It's a good job

Do you  know what's great? I can give my daughter a pack of cards and send her off to organise them and she does. And if she wanders back to me I can tell her: Girl, I gave you one job. Have you finished organising all those cards already? And, because she hasn't, she goes back to her work.

My son has autism, but it's my neurally-typical daughter who likes to organise and line stuff up. Boy prefers to organise everything in his head.

We have an airport in our backyard. It's called BC Airport, which may stand for Big Careful Airport, and boy is both pilot and CEO. Every single conversation comes back to BC Airport. We have a sign on our front door heralding the presence of BC!!!*, and this fictional** airport features in every picture he draws, every story he tells, every game he narrates.

And, so, nobody has the faintest idea what he's talking about. At 6 that's kind of cute and people make allowances. A few more years and he's that really odd kid who you can't talk to because you're never quite sure what he's on about and he refuses to talk about anything else and, anyway, seems to prefer talking to himself.

We've been advised to encourage different interests, so he's learning about Star Wars. He's not just watching and playing, he's studying, taking in every detail he can find, cataloguing these somewhere in his phenomenal brain, to be pulled out and used in what passes for conversation with Boy.

BC is still here, they've just repurposed some of their factory space to building light sabers, and outfitted their brand new space fighters with laser weapons. And rather than some special BC event, we're now eagerly awaiting a visit from R2D2.

Boy enjoys drama class, but next week's class is about "swear word"***. This, he tells me, represents a grave threat to the universe.

BC Airport is on it, however, as they've already commissioned the construction of battle droids who can work for the Republic to battle this insidious evil****.

We do get dull moments. But they don't seem to last long.



*I can't remember whether it's !!! or !!!!
** No. It's real.
*** He has an extreme anxiety about doctors and anything medical and uses swearword as a replacement noun.
**** It's ok, I'm not letting him go. Not after he conceived the idea some years ago of building a giant helicopter to round up all the doctors in the world and then execute them. It's one of those mothering faux pas you just never quite recover from.

Beautiful little pedant

Some people on TV were singing happily about having the cleanest kitchen in the world - thanks to their sterling cleaning efforts.

Boy says: They're just showing off. Pffft.

I'm so proud that he can see through this pathetically meaningless, self-congratulatory celebration of ordinariness. He's also rather pedantic.

When Peppa Pig and her friends sing Peace and harmony in all the world, Boy rejoins: Well, except when there's a war.

And when his teacher puts him in time-out - it doesn't happen often, but it does elicit a lot of due consideration from  Boy - he critiques their management techniques, concluding that their methods do not work on him.

Boy: When we're in time out, the teachers think we are thinking about good things that we should be doing. But I'm thinking about even worse things that I could have done.

Nation building

This morning Boy presented maps he'd drawn of two countries he's planning to make.

OK.

"And now, I have to write some numbers so you know how many babies you need to have to live in these countries."

OK.

"Don't worry, they're not that big. You won't have to have like 10,000* or anything like that."

Great.

"So, the plan is that they'll grow up here in Australia and then when we have the right number of adults, they'll go to their countries."

He has to buy a flotilla of boats to get them all there, and teach them all their new languages. He's going to be really good at this, however, since he's the one making it up in the first place.

Sounds like I may be busy...


*Final tallies: 76 and 60 each.

He said, she said

Picture an open-plan kitchen/dining area. A mother sits at the table, turning to drink. A boy and girl run around, sometimes playing, mostly bickering.
Imagine the girl suddenly pulls up short and, hands pressed to the side of her head, she lets out a piercing shriek.
"Nobody understands me! But, only the triangles do."

Another scene: a mother is driving, two children in the back. A boy is screaming and crying. A girl is yelling at him to be quiet: "You're hurting my ears!"
The mother agrees to buy popadums, but only if the boy stops screaming.
"There's no way I can take you to the shops like this."
And, suddenly, the boy falls quiet and his tears stop.
"OK."
The mother congratulates the boy on his emotional regulation (wondering all the while why he couldn't have just done that 10 minutes earlier).
"Yes, mummy, I just figured it out. If I stop making noise and then wipe my tears away, I feel better."
"No you don't, because everyone has to be sad."
The mother tries to ignore the ensuing argument about whether or not the boy is happy.

Now: the mother elsewhere, two children are watching television.
"I like Peter Rabbit, because it teaches you what to do if you have enemies."

You make scarecrows out of their clothes.

Life's lessons learnt

Nobody likes it, but it's an important life lesson. And, yanno, if you try sometimes, you might just get what you need.

Girl was raging about an injustice, as she's wont to do and has done since she figured out how to scream.

I told her I understood that she was angry, but no she couldn't have juice because, despite her protestations to the contrary, we really and truly didn't have any. Because, you see, we can't always get what we want.

Boy: Yes, I know that. It's like when I want the house to take off but I don't have my jet packs.

Yes. Exactly this.

Laying down the law

My children do not suffer from identity crises, nor do they have any problem perceiving their place in the world.

Boy: I am Boss #1, and Girl is Boss #2.
Dad: Does that mean we're Bosses # 3 and 4.
Boy: Nooooo! You're our slaves.
Dad: Which is Slave #1 and 2?
Boy: Well.... Mummy is Slave #1.
Me: Girl, am I your mummy or a slave?
Girl: [smiling sweetly] You're my slave, mummy.

I'm assuming that Slave #1 is the person responsible for the bulk of the slaving that goes on around here.

Boy has the makings of a sociopathic supreme leader. Nothing is ever his fault. Everything should be precisely as he wants it. Everyone else in the entire English-speaking world is wrong, you do so spell it bloons.

Girl's a bit more like the quirky dictator who sometimes indulges in benevolence. She finds everything hilarious and demands lots of cuddles, but then sometimes she gets angry and starts raging, which is funny for everyone else (though it won't be once she's in command of an actual firing squad).

A spoonful of trouble

Boy drew a picture at school of a worry bag, in which he was to add all his troubles.

He is worried about (in no particular order):

Planes dropping bombs on his house in a war.
The earth exploding
And...
An emu running off with him in its beak.

He agrees that the first two are unlikely.

What a girl wants

I've been informed that, apparently, it's not good to say 'shush' or similar to little girls since lacking a Y chromosome means she's likely to get hushed into compliant submission as an adult by everyone else.

Girl has heard this and has taken to yelling at me: "Don't shush me mama!" or "Stop shushing me!"

I suspect she isn't going to have any problem standing up for herself. Or I hope not. It's a nuisance sometimes now (though equally cute and endearing at times), but I'm sure it'll mean she's an alpha female one day.

.....

She told me a bedtime story yesterday:

Once upon a time there were three little pigs and they were lazy.
Along came a big, bad wolf in fluffy underpants and he knocked on their door and then ate them all up.

She seems to have gotten the main points, more or less.

...

The other day, when Boy declared that he couldn't possibly use the plate that had been lovingly provided for him since a cow had pooed on it, we expressed some credulity about the likelihood that a cow could come into our house, let along defecated anywhere, without us noticing.

Girl told us: Yes, it was ONE cow. And it pooed EVERYWHERE! [add sound effects]

Misapplication of logic

Girl counting money:
One mun. Two muns. Three muns. Four muns!

Interpretation:
Money, clearly, is the diminutive of the correct term, mun.
Therefore, the correct plural form is muns.

Very logical.

Speaking of which:

After a recent running-race thing at school* Boy bemoaned the fact that he never wins.

But I win all the flying races, Mummy!




*I forgot to go and didn't even have the decency to feel bad when Boy asked whether I'd seen him run.

Backseat philosopher

(Overheard when driving recently.)

Yes. Sometimes life is annoying.
You just have to deal with it.
[pause, as though listening to a response]
You know, it's just like when you stick three pieces of paper together in a clump.

I think there's something there for everyone.

Once I caught a fish alive

Girl has learnt a thing or two from Boy.

Girl: Mummy, you in the water. I'm gonna fish ya! Swim! Swim!
Daddy: Is Mummy a good fish?
Girl: No. She's a dead fish. 'Cos I'm gonna eat fishies!

Happily, I'm still whole and live.

Creative language

Lately, Boy has been asking me things like: "Mummy is [insert random word here] a swear word?"

When, like a good parent, I attempt to avoid directly answering his question and ask him, "Why do you want to know?", he tells me he's just curious.

"Do you know any swear words mummy? Can you tell me some?"

It appears one of his little classmates has been getting into trouble with the teachers.

"'Taleah', they say, 'don't use swear words'. But I don't know what swear words are."

Boy does love his language, and I hate to disappoint him.

"Funtastic is a swear word", I tell him.

"Fun-tas-tic!" Then he gives me that look: slight squint, head cocked to the side. "Is it *really* mummy?"

He appears to have come to the conclusion that swear words are something special and, perhaps, is hoping to impress his teachers. The funny thing is that if I shared a few choice words with him he'd probably be fairly unimpressed. Sigh, you say those things all the time mummy.

What's love got to do with it?

Boy informed me yesterday that he likes me, sometimes, and sometimes he doesn't. But he doesn't love me. Because love means you really, really, really like someone, and he can't really, really, really like me when he sometimes doesn't like me.

I have suggested an alternate definition of love, one that is not necessarily incompatible with occasional dislike. He disagrees.

I got my mother's day card today. He has written: Lik(e) you.

The full intended message, which he didn't get finished, was:

Dear mum,
I like you and I don't like you. I don't love you.
Happy Mother's Day!

Modern marvel

Boy wanted to know when Grandma was born.

Wow, that was a really long time ago!
Yes. I'm 64.
Ah, yes! That's because modern medicine is keeping you alive.

Easy as...

In the car today the kids were singing ABC... more or less.

Boy: ... Now I know my ABC...
Girl: ...next time I won't sing with you!

Girl's version is very cute, and she includes at least three "b"s.
My personal favourite is the mutant-hybrid letter: Gubble-eks

Boy tried to correct her, of course.
Duh-bul-yoo!

Another backseat conversation:

Boy: What was the story about?
Girl: Uh... I don't know.
Boy: Do you mean you forgot?
Girl: Uh...yeah. I forgot.
Boy: Well you can't say I don't know if you forgot. They don't mean the same thing, you know. So, did you forget what the story was about?
Girl: Uh... I don't know.

Flap my wings and fly away

This morning, Boy was perched on the wrought iron frame at the end of our bed. I've asked him not to do this on many occasions. He tells me to just calm down. Stop nagging.

So, anyway, this morning he did the thing I've been warning him might happen - he toppled over backward and fell straight on to his back. I rushed round to him, barely restraining my Itoldyouso.

But he knew what I was thinking.

I..I..I'm ok, he managed to stammer, trying to hold back the tears.
I picked him up, carried him to the bed and cuddled him.
He cried a little, but kept talking:

I put my arms out to flap, but I was too close to the ground so I couldn't put them out again. So I couldn't fly.
But I glided a bit. Did you see me? Actually, I fell really slowly, because my shirt filled up like a parachute.

I said: it looked to me like you fell straight on to your back.

No, I landed like an airplane.

On your landing gear?

Yes... well, no... On my feet. See, I put my feet down like this.

I laughed. Couldn't help it.

Anyway, he's fine.

Quantum leap

Boy has made an amazing discovery! Little footprints in the sandpit. It's going to take a lot science to figure this one out.

They're definitely not our cat's - too small, no claw marks.

They must belong to a wild cat. Yes, definitely a cat, not a dog. (Though they do look a little like the painted dog prints at the zoo.)

A wild, nocturnal cat.

Possibly a wild, nocturnal *blind* cat. It's possible. Hard to say at this point.

And it howls! Yes, he hears it every night.

It snores and sleeps in the day time.

It's black. (We mustn't forget to write that.)

The adult of this as-yet unnamed discovery has a footprint the size of a car. So this must be a baby.

It's from Africa, but it escaped to here, Perth.

Once he figures out this mystery, he's going to write books and sell them to everyone in the whole, wide world.

Love my Boy

Boy and I seem to be involved in some sort of parent-child tussle to see who is the boss. It's not a battle I want to indulge in, nor do I see the need in any case. But Boy, apparently, wants this. He complains constantly and incessantly about my dictatorial ways. He threatens to annoy me just as much as I annoy him. He critiques my decision making skills and tells me he hates me. He goes on and on and on and on. It's tiresome. I let it wash over me. I let him make as many decisions for himself as he sensibly can. I point out the flaws in his crazy schemes - now, really, there are still a great many things you need help with Boy. Do you think you can live alone just yet? When you're bigger.

He wants to escape - to live in space or under the ocean. He wants the house to take off, driven by the pure willpower of a 5 year old, to take him to new and exciting lands. He's constantly building vehicles of escape, but none of them ever work. And he's is frustrated and angry. And sometimes he throws himself at me, fists and spittle flying.

And he wants to be the boss of me. Do as I say! I don't care what you say. I don't care what you want.

Today, he was yelling at me to freeze.

No, I said. I don't want to.

You have to FREEZE!

No. I'm not going to do something just because you tell me to. I need a good reason.

You have to freeze because.... I want to give you a cuddle.

So I froze. And he came to me and cuddled me and said: I love you mummy.

I'll do what I want!

Look mummy, I've told you FIVE times now, so you've got it, right? I don't want you interfering with my cooking practice.

Yeah. I got it. Do you understand my problem with this?

I think I do...

It's because I'm worried you'll waste food making something that even you won't eat and make a big mess that you'll refuse to clean up.

No. The problem is that I don't care...

Yeah. I got that.

The silver screen

Recuperating from a nasty dose of gastro, Boy occupied himself this afternoon with plans to build a TV. (Having completed the truck that is his latest attempt at achieving space travel.)

Unfortunately, I wasn't much help with figuring out how to make one, and he didn't get much further than dumping toys out of one of his plastic tubs. Then daddy got home...

Here, we see the timeless classic that is Crazy Penguin and Draggy the Dragon Battling to the Death.

Well, actually, not to the death....

".. and then, they got married."