I'm so not going to attempt my wife's goal of blogging about Autism every day in April but it's rare that the chance to tell funny Autism stories presents itself.
The boys both know that Owen has Autism, or as they always say "Has SOME Autism" and we've tried to be very upfront about the whole thing and stress how lucky we are that Owen only has it a little (he's very high-functioning, most people don't realize he has an Autism diagnosis, probably just think he's a little ADD). To that end we've tried to explain, in 5-year-old terms, exactly what that means in an accurate way so Owen can both explain himself and probably defend from people that have a lesser understanding of what it means - so they know that Owen has SOME Autism and that "his brain is a little different", as well as some of the things he struggles with because of it.
Sitting down with the boys to play a board game not long ago and, like everything else that a couple of 5-year-old boys do, it turned into a competitive me-first argument. To address this issue a lot of board games now include a rule that "Youngest player goes first" - which doesn't help at all with twins.
While his brother is trying to whine his way into going first, Owen pipes up with a helpful suggestion.
"Hey guys - Since we're tied for who is youngest, how about whoever has a different brain goes first?"
We all turn and look, I'm already laughing.
"What?"
"How about whoever has a different brain goes first? Aidan and I are the same age so since I have a different brain - I go first." and proceeded to put his piece on the board and roll the dice. His brother seemed satisfied to concede based on this criteria and game play proceeded without a fight.
Way to spin that to your advantage, kid.
You might want to keep it to yourself when you hit Las Vegas.
No comments:
Post a Comment