Thumbs Up!

When you're this close to the action, it's difficult to step back and see the progress he's made. Then it hits you up side the head.
We were sitting in a speech evaluation on Tuesday and I was trying, desperately, not to speak for Sam. You see, Sam has autism. I, being his mother, can, intuitively, know what he's trying to say, even if he can't say anything. So I busied myself with my planner and tried to send him the answers telepathically.
It was fill in the blank. "Sally's cat is IN the chair". "Now Sally's cat is...". She was looking for "behind the chair" but Sam said "out". It was accurate. The cat was out of the chair. I wondered if she had counted that right or wrong as I tried to read her markings upside-down. I was ready to plead the case for "out" when she moved on to the next question.
"This is Mary. Mary is going UP the stairs." "This is John. John is going..." I held my breath thinking "down the stairs...down the stairs..." but Sam only looked at the picture. He was probably wondering why these people always had such dull names. That's what I was wondering. Finally he said "down". The speech therapist said "hmmmm.". She was looking for "helper phrases". The correct answer was "down the stairs".
The good part was, Sam was paying attention, for the most part. He was still in his chair. And he hadn't yet melted down. I was giving him big points for that.
Somewhere halfway through the interrogation, Sam responded with what he thought was the right answer, then turned to me and gave me a huge grin and a thumbs up. It melted my heart. That was such a cognitively-aware thing to do! He was looking for reinforcement. And I didn't care of the answer was right or wrong! I gave him a huge grin and thumbs up right back.
To me, that was more important than whether John had helper phrases or not. Sam was learning social cues. I know he'll pick up on the nuances of language as we go along. What I wasn't sure about was whether he'd pick up on the slang, cliches, and signals we give each other that mean so much. I tell ya, when he says "Oh sure!" instead of the monotone "yes", I glow inside. Because understanding social cues and how to understand the unspoken language we all speak is so very important. And he's getting it.
Thumbs up, Sam!!!