Which Way, Wonderkind?

Tucker obviously inherited his navigational abilities from a distant relative.  While I fully admit to being utterly inept at knowing where we are and which direction is the best choice for getting un-lost, hubby thinks his navigational skills are top-notch.  They’re not.  Don’t tell him though.  He’s quite proud of the fact that they’re better than mine.  And they are.  I’ll give him that.  But also, a deaf and blind person who experiences short-term memory loss probably has better navigational skills than I do.

Regardless of whether we’ve been somewhere a couple times or a bunch, Tucker always knows where we are.  And which way we need to turn in order to arrive at his desired location (the car wash, The Air & Space Museum, the ice cream shop, the store with the Thomas the Train table or the place that sells toy ninees).

Tucker introduced me to his newly invented game on the way home today.  He probably secretly calls it “lets see how dumb mommy really is.”  The entire way home he kept telling me to go the wrong way.  I could see his eyes light up in the rearview mirror right before he used his version of “this way,” and then proceeded to point the wrong way.  When I replied asking “That way?  That’s not the way home, you silly guy!” he’d just laugh and laugh.  He kept this up for the entire ride and continued to misguide me even when I could plainly see our house right in front of us.  He thought it was hilarious.

He’s also getting sneakier.  He lied to me last night.  About something other than poop.* These things may not sound like much if you’re raising a typical kid, but when you’re raising a little boy who may or may not have autism spectrum issues, the fact that he’s being silly and sneaky is pure relief and awesomeness.  He’s faking us out.  He’s pretending.  He’s lying to get out of stuff.

Obviously we’ll have to work on the lying at some point but for now I’m nothing but relieved and excited.  I remember when we started the process of becoming involved with early intervention services.  Tucker received multiple evaluations to determine which therapies and educational services he qualified for.  We were asked more than a few times whether he initiated imaginary play.  At the time, I was like “What?  What does that mean?  What exactly should he be doing?”  I’m not sure whether I ever figured out what he should have been doing or whether he was doing it, but there is no doubt in my mind that him thinking it’s funny to tell his poor old mommy to turn the wrong way is not only proof that he’s using his imagination, he’s initiating a game of silliness without prompting.  That’s big stuff.

*He’s lied about needing to poop and having already pooped for a long time.

Wow, I look really thin in this photo.  I’m not that thin.  I’m just really that bad at drawing.
In case you were wondering.