Incidentally x 2

Children have to be educated, 

but they have also to be left to educate themselves.  

~Abbé Dimnet,

Art of Thinking, 1928

Ahhh one of the first things you learn when you have a child with autism is that they don't just pick things up. The professionals call it incidental learning. We don't see much of incident learningl from Boy Wonder.  However, every once in a while he likes to shock us with just how much he observes.

Recently, I was refereeing the girlies and his pizza was done. He heard the beep, went in kitchen, got the potholder, put the potholder on his hand and came out into the living room and said, " I want pizza!!!" Alone, no instruction, no prompt, NO NOTHING. Completely and utterly independently. 

Then, Friday night, we took the 3 kids to Target since THE DIVA'S epic love of all things Disney has yet killed another blu-ray player. Boy Wonder does not get to go to Target often.  As Boy Wonder and I stood on line, he kept letting go of the cart and going to look at the crack soda cooler. I kept telling him, "No soda. Hands on the cart, please." I finish paying and I hear this crinkling noise. I look and he's smacking a bag of chips on the conveyor belt. I apologize to the woman behind me  for the chip smashing. She says,"Oh he put those on the belt."  I started to laugh. He is standing there all smiles saying, "Chips please". Usually he would hand me the bag and say, "Open chips" but he put them on the belt. You can't tell me he didn't know we had to pay for them. I know he knew. 

So maybe he doesn't "incidentally" learn as fast as most kids but he does learn and so does Mommy. Even in Target.