I’ve probably commented on this before, but…

For all of the verbal structures and words that the Monster does have, there are times where it’s a game, figuring out what he’s actually talking about.

This morning, when school was delayed due to freezing rain, I was the one who got him out of bed and started the morning rolling.  Because I’m not a cruel (or incompetent) parent, I had him already down and somewhat fed in front of the television before my wife came down from upstairs.  Normally, for him, breakfast can be one of several things – cereal, a bagel, a pop tart – but this morning, he had requested a banana, so I’d given him one.

Once R was up as well, and we started towards having a genuine meal, he started to insist on “banana!” and “animal crackers!”.

The problem is that those two demands may or may not be genuinely what he’s looking for.  He’d already, for instance, had a banana, so I highly doubted that he was asking already for a second one.  He also knows that he’s not getting animal crackers at eight in the morning, so while he might have been asking for them, there’s no real expectation that he’s getting them.  As with ‘Sesame Street’ has been for a while, he’s using words that he knows as a fill-in for something that he wants but hasn’t figured out the right word for at the moment.

And we’re not mind-readers, so that ensued a game of “Guess what Animal Crackers are today?” to try to find something that he was willing to eat.

From where I sit, this is something that probably should be pointed out to the SLP either at his private therapy or at school, so that they know to work on the matter since we’re clearly in the dark about what to do to encourage him to really ask for what he wants.  It’s just a matter of giving him the tools to better communicate…