My poor speech processing meets his literalness

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I've been having trouble lately with processing quickly enough to say exactly what my AS son needs to hear. Speech, in general, is difficult for me, and I am much more prone to take a child by the hand and lead them to where we need to be doing something (etc.). What is causing me trouble is that my AS son will take my words that I do find to mean something I didn't intend.

Example:

We are in a store and he's touching everything and he's really a bull in a china shop kind of kid already. I say, "don't touch anything you can't buy".

So, he starts to take his clothes off.

Because he's touching them.

My brain freezes. I have no words. Physically, I can get him to stop undressing.

I honestly don't know if this is his literalness or he's just being an ass. Either way, I'm equally screwed on dealing with it when it relies on talking through the situation.

Could be a little of both. I'd have to be there to really determine what is what.

How far are you towards getting your degree?

15 months left

I think you have an excellent drive to succeed--in everything.

In being a mother, and a scholar!

Thanks!

How old is he and is he verbal?

8, very verbal.

My daughter (not AS but not typical) sometimes likes to play and get to be in charge. Since it seems like maybe you feel your son is somewhat lost what to do but knows better than some of what he does reminds me of times I play something with her ahead of time.

I don't know if this would help, but I might play store with him where you play little boy, either you or with a doll or stuffed toy, and start grabbing things and running around and generally doing everything wrong and ask him to be the grown up and correct you. Maybe he'll learn something, and you can teach him your rules as you play. Also teach him to be in charge of himself more, but through playing the grown up and telling you what to do. My daughter loves telling me what to do, it helps me get things across to her.

Or there are always social stories, you could probably get google social story for ____ and find something someone's written to try out.

Waterfalls, thanks for the suggestions! It certainly can't hurt to try the role-play.

I like social stories and they are useful for him (I have an app).

Truthfully, him touching things in a store is something I should have predicted and planned better for. ...but there are so many times when he does something so bizarre that I couldn't have planned for it in my wildest dreams. In fact, if my son had a talent, I'd say that's what it is--doing things no one would ever suspect (but often in hindsight are logical to some degree).

He also has some issues in general with taking his clothes off. Sometimes he starts to undress when he's anxious...which often happens when there are a lot of people around. It's awesome.

My son is very literal. At 8, it was extremely difficult because back then not only did he not know what "literal" meant, he did not know that he was literal. Sometimes it lead to amusing stories, but sometimes it would be very bad, either in terms of safety, or in terms of his interactions with others, particularly adults, who always thought he was being a smart ass because his vocabulary was advanced so they didn't understand that although he had the vocabulary of someone twice his age, he had the comprehension of someone half his age.

The first thing that helped me was to try to communicate in as concrete a way as I possibly could. I will try to walk through you example and explain it in terms of my experience with my son. In your specific instance, although you said nothing to him of a "bull in a china shop," (a statement that a person prone to a literal interpretation would likely not understand) the statement you did say encompassed the idea expressed in the idiom "a bull in a china shop" and alluded to the saying "If you break it, you buy it," which a literally minded person may not be able to properly interpret either. So, for your example, the clearest thing to say is "Do not touch the things that belong to the store," but I don't know how difficult that would be for you with MERLD. However, the second thing that helped me was to use as few words as possible, which would translate to "Don't touch," which might be more do-able for you. And repeat it every time he touched something until he got it. For a literally-minded person, it wouldn't take too long to "get it."

While I do not have the same issues as you do, I do know what it is like when your limitations and your child's needs are contradictory to one another. It honestly sucks. However, as my son has gotten older (he is 13 now), he has become aware of the fact that he is literal, and it has made dealing with it easier, because if I say something to him that does not make sense, he tells me that what I said does not makes sense, or he paraphrases it back to me in words of his own understanding to make sure he understood what I said.

Thank you very much, InThisTogether!

I can definitely memorize this

. It's a much better thing to say. Although, he did throw something of an anxiety fit about touching the floor and the cart, so maybe I could say, "Do not touch the things on the shelves". I'm pretty good about memorizing short scripts, but really awful at creatively combining words in the moment. And, it's very difficult when what he needs is something that require a lot of spontaneous higher order verbal thought.

It *is* really hard when your special needs conflicts with your child's. It's less of a deal now that he's older...but this guy is a cuddler. He has always craved being all squeezed up right next to someone. And I've had lifelong issues with being touched at all. I had to set firm boundaries and also accept being uncomfortable some of the time for the benefit of my son's needs. (It's much easier to handle now that he's older.)

I also find i get what I want more by saying "please hold my hand or the cart" rather than trying to think up everything that shouldn't be touched (I can't).

That is also a good approach...to tell them what you want them TO DO instead of what you DON'T want them to do.

Oh boy, I was never that literal and his clothes you don't buy because they are already owned so I would have thought he was being a smart ass. But how is this not literal "If you break it, you buy it?" If you break something, you would have to buy it.

To be fair, stores are confusing. We talk as if they have things for us, but in fact everything belongs to the owner of the store until we pay for it.

The phrase has multiple layers of meanings. In the literal sense, it means exactly what it says "if you break it, you buy it." From a literal standpoint, it is OK to continue touching things, which is not what the statement means, because the meaning of the phrase extends beyond that to mean "Do not touch things in this store. They are fragile."

I never realized how much figurative and indirect speech was out there until my son couldn't decipher it. Or how often simple speech is just not clear. For example, when my son was learning to cross the street by himself, he got the "look both ways." But his father told him to "look behind him." What he meant is that when you are at an intersection, you have to look, not just at the street that is crossing in front of you, but also at the street you are walking parallel to, because a car could be coming up behind you and turning into where you are crossing.

My son would dutifully walk up to the intersection, look both ways as he was taught, then twist his upper body half way around to look at the ground behind him. It made absolutely no sense to him to do so, but his father told him to do it, so he did. So much of what people said to him made no sense to him, so he just chalked it up to the weird way other people talk.

Realizations like this---when I understand why they are doing "weird" things-- always let a little sadness slip into my heart. Things that most people simply take for granted can be such a struggle to our kids.