And the word for today is. . .

  i'm not sure why it's so hard for individuals, especially kids, with autism to say what they mean.  But
i find that time & again.
  i want to take Max's word for something, but, after he says yes to a hot dog then refuses it so many times, i just can't.

Cheese and a Game

  Saturday we were playing our game of Trouble.  Dinner was late; MyGuy had come to the point of putting the cheese & pepperoni on the pizzas.  i knew Max was hungry, so i asked him, both verbally and on paper, if he wanted a piece of cheese.
  Yes.
  Ok.  Do you want to put the game away, be finished with it, then go have the cheese (check here) or go have cheese & come back & play one more round (check here)?
  Play one more round.
  So he went to have cheese, then didn't want to play.
  Did i say it wrong?
  Quite likely.  Maybe he only heard/saw the part about cheese now or later.  It seemed perfectly sensible at the time, but what seems a perfectly good way to talk to Max often isn't.
  i wrote something more about needing to trust that what he says is what he means, pointed out what he had in fact chosen, and allowed him to choose again.
  He chose to play again.  One more time, only.

Factor in Life

  The above is a relatively simple problem. But life throws so much more at you.
  Yesterday i ate with a friend and her autistic son.  There are custody issues and hard feelings in the background.
  The exes do not accept each other's word on just about anything.
  And the caseworkers want to figure out what's going on by asking the child?
  i can well imagine this kid, and many who are NOT on the spectrum, answering based on

• what gets them outta here soonest
• what whichever parent/stepparent they were last with instructed them to say
• whatever they perceive will get them the desired outcome
• oh, yes, the simple truth.

   And i don't envy the job of anyone who needs to untangle this.

  Meanwhile, we have to get past this somehow. We have to be able to rely on people to mean what they say, give readable clues to irony or other reasons why a may not equal a.
  If not, society breaks down.