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L has always come up with funny little sayings - that he will use in any number of situations. His most recent one is if anyone says “I know...” he responds with “Han’s line or Leia’s line?” (The answer is Leia’s line - you don’t want to know what happens if you answer Han).
One of my favourites is when strangers ask him “What’s your name?” and he responds with “I eat blue tack”. This often completely confuses the asker who persists on repeating the question. You might think “What’s your name?” is such a simple, straightforward question - but to L it is anything but. It’s so complex because L’s identity is so complex- how can he be defined by such a simple name such as “L”. It’s so demanding - it’s starting a conversation with someone he doesn’t know, the anxiety of the situation starts skyrocketing until the responses of “I eat blue tack” or “Red Fish” or whatever else he thinks of no longer work… and he ends up in a meltdown. All the asker really had to do was accept the answer to the question in the first place - L gave an answer, it’s not his problem the asker didn’t like it.
Last year I had a rather long discussion with a Speech and Language Therapist at L’s school who got hung up on L saying “Boo” instead of “Excuse Me”. When I asked her why it was such a concern, she responded that it was so he would better integrate into society. The thing is L is never going to “integrate into society”. And she completely missed the point. L wasn’t saying Boo because he doesn’t know ‘excuse me’ or because it’s a learnt behaviour. He says it because in that moment it’s what he needs to say. Trying to change that is going to be a cause of more anxiety - it won’t make things better or easier for him. Sadly, one of the things that I have learnt on this journey is that quite a lot of the professionals really don’t have many answers, and most of the time their well meaning solutions just do more damage.
So today, in creating this splatter painting with the kids, I asked them for a good family saying. Secretly hoping that they would come up with something cheesy like “Magic is here” or “We embrace individuality”. But no, there was a quick debate and unanimously the whole three said “Red Fish”. So here we have it, and to be honest the randomness is more in keeping with this home than any other saying could be.
Also, just in case you were wondering, during the creation of this masterpiece the following happened: At least 7 different coloured hand prints appeared on walls around the house, all in different spots; I think the kids managed to flick more paint on me than the canvas; My 5 year old refused to wear any clothes all day, but did figure out how to scan and photocopy pictures of his own bottom on the printer; We were banned from coming upstairs for 2 hours as L was in the middle of filming a new youtube video of his Star Wars minifigures; And I have a large lump on my head as I was woken up by a Ukulele hitting me because someone couldn’t find the TV remote.
Just another day in the life of a PDA home. Do you or your kids have any favourite expressions? I would love to hear them!!! 💕💕💕
