What They Notice

I mentioned a few weeks ago that we had to replace both cars, and that it took a while for the Monster to get used to my new ride.

Of course, it has now been a few weeks.  The Monster has been riding in my car every Thursday to go to gymnastics, and the wife’s car every few days to go other places.

So on Sunday, I picked him up from Sunday Funday, since it was my turn to do the run.  (She’d taken him there, so I thought it fair that I went to pick him up.)  After the Monster was brought up from the early childhood wing and had come over to lunge at me, I took him outside to driveway, where a number of cars had pulled up to retrieve children from the various programs.  I’ve been trying to encourage him to be more diverse in his descriptions of things, since he’s more inclined to stick to the rote phrases that he likes to use – requests for food, for his iPad, for the TV to be on or off, etc.

Pointing to a brown car, I asked him if this was my car.  He gave me an affirmative response… which isn’t too unusual. Either he wasn’t listening, or he thought I wanted a yes.  “Monster,” I said again.  “Are you sure this is Abba’s car?”

“No,” he said, chastised.  We moved to the next car, a white van, and I asked again if it was my car.  This time, I got the right answer – No – and then we moved onto my car.  “Is this my car?”  “Yes!” he called out, and moved to his door.  “Abba’s car.”

“What color is Abba’s car?”

“Blue.”  Which is correct.  Good.  He is paying attention.

“What color is Mommy’s car?”

“Green.”  No prompting, nothing.  He gave the right answer to a simple-fact question.

“What kind of car does Mommy have?”  That was, to me, a harder question, but he answered “Van” correctly enough.

It’s good to see that it’s sticking, at least, in his head, those kinds of simple facts.  The next thing to work on, though, is to see if we can’t get him to memorize our phone number or address… or maybe our license plates.  (Of course, that last one, that requires us to memorize our plates first…)

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