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Sunday, February 13, 2011

Never underestimate him!

My apologies for not posting yet this month. I have been battling the flu since February 1st and the germs seemed to be winning for awhile. I'm making a strong comeback now, though!
Do you have a child who has difficulty following novel directions? My son, Josh, has ADHD and auditory processing difficulties. He has significant learning challenges and struggles to remember what he hears. He has a tendency to take things literally, with sometimes interesting results. Other times he draws the wrong conclusion and inadvertently changes the expected outcome. For example, once I found a recipe that sounded interesting. You put all the ingredients for an omelet into a sealed ziploc bag and cook it in boiling water. I thought this would be great, especially for those of us who have picky eaters, because everyone could choose which ingredients to include. My husband and I could include onions in ours, but our daughter has not yet learned to appreciate onions so she could omit them from her omelet. I compiled a few different omelet variations into separate ziploc bags and made sure they were sealed tightly. I put the water on to boil, and went into the next room to work with my daughter on a computer assignment. Josh went into the kitchen and shouted to me that the water was boiling. I asked him to carefully put the bags into the boiling water for me and to use the tongs that were sitting on the counter. Using one of his strategies, Josh requested clarification that I wanted all the bags put into the water. I confirmed that and a few minutes later went to check on my omelets. Surprise! What I found looked more like egg drop soup than omelets. At first I thought the bags must have split open while they were boiling. Then I saw the emptied bags off to the side and realized that Josh had meticulously opened each one and poured the contents into the boiling water, thus defeating the attempt to keep the ingredients separate for different omelets. Josh saw the flabbergasted expression on my face and asked if something was wrong. I explained that when I had asked him to "Put the bags into the water" I meant the entire bags. Josh said he thought about it, but that idea didn't make sense to him and he had never seen me put any bags into boiling water so he decided he was supposed to just dump everything in. I thought I had been clear in my instructions, but I told Josh I would try to be more specific in the future. He grinned at me and said, "Never underestimate my incompetence, Mom!" I love that kid and his sense of humor.

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