COPS--Kyle Style June 2007
by Sue Sokoff
After-bath experiences can be very interesting sources of interaction between parents and their child with autism. Let me give you an example of what happened to us last week.
Our son loves to take a luxurious bath, get dry and then dash out of the bathroom in his birthday suit, shrieking and making the best of his few minutes of nudism. One ordinary Tuesday night, after bath time, Kyle (and I) began to gear up for his flight to freedom. I had gotten wise to his tactic and stopped him before he could reach the door. I simply said, "Kyle, you can't go outside without your clothes on." He immediately replied, much to my surprise, "The policeman will come." I was not expecting that response as the topic of police and nude little boys had never come up. So I said, "Oh really, and what will the policeman say when he gets here?" You could see the gears turning in Kyle's head as he hesitated a moment, lowered the pitch of his voice to emulate a man as much as he could, and responded, "Hey, kid, go put some clothes on!" I was stunned, probably took a step back, and then burst out laughing. In my wildest imagination, I never expected that to come out of Kyle's mouth. Maybe, "Kyle, come with me" or "When you are in trouble, have to call the Policeman," but never, never, "Hey, kid, go put some clothes on." What episode of COPS did he hear that on?
Kyle's very innocent, yet accurate representation of what a policeman would say makes me wonder "what next?" And it is for those "what next" moments we live; when out of the furthest blue, something so surprising bursts forth that we can't help but be left in "shock and awe." When I see his frustration at not being able to get out what he is thinking or when we get into our routine teaching efforts and I'm not seeing a lot of progress, I now have a reference point on which to draw. When it seems like we're going backwards, I always wonder what the next thing will be that will help me see beyond the autism to the marvelous personality and humor of our little guy; maybe a scene from Grey's Anatomy??