“Mom, I have the pluj!!??”

I was listening to one of my favorite cartoon characters saying, “Be wery wery quiet, I’m hunting wabbits!”…It brings an immediate smile because he is so cute and speaks so innocently and I just want to pinch his little cheeks.

The other day, my son came and laid down beside me and said, “Mom, I am not feeling too good, I think I have the pluj!” Ok, I have MANY moments when I visit with my son and I am completely confused on what he is trying to say to me, even at thirteen years old. I gave him the “I do not understand what ‘pluj’ means look” and then he said, “You know Mom,” as he began to spell it out, ” I have the P.L.A.G.U.E.” I smiled and said, “Oh, the plague!” (Inside I was amazed that he knew how to spell plague- gosh another miracle of progress before my very own eyes). What you have to understand about him is that he loves to study his dictionary and use bigger words as he speaks and I am very impressed most of the time, but very grateful too, I am there to correct him so he does not get made fun of in public. I corrected his pronunciation of the word and he said, “You know it means I have a disease.” I thanked him for the definition and explained to him that this was a very serious word and gave him some explanations of different plagues that can occur.

Later, I pondered, “I wonder why it is ok for a cute cuddly cartoon character to say words incorrectly and we think it is so sweet and we even mimic it in a light- hearted way and it is NOT ok for a child with autism or some other special ability – like speech problems, etc. to say something incorrectly and we immediately begin to make fun of them instead of helping them as they do their best to fit in by expanding their vocabulary?.”

Your thoughts?

These are the type of stories you will find inside the pages of our newly released: Marvel in your Autistic Eyes, Character lessons from my Son. I encourage you to visit our Facebook page with the same name and watch my son’s interview on being a child with autism. I want to bottle up his smile from this interview elmer_fudd and emulate the same beautiful attitude in times when I use the wrong choice of words- deliberate or not!