We had some drama on this on vacation with my 8 year old nephew, M. M is going to speech therapy for pragmatic speech issues and is VERY rigid about what things were called. He got into it a number of times with my son C.
Coversations went like this:
C: I want to play the video game.
M: It's not a video game, it's a PSP.
C: No, video game.
M: No, you're WRONG. It's a PSP.
C (screaming now): I'm not wrong. It's a video game.
Me (intervention!): You're both right. There are many different words for the same thing.... blah, blah, blah.....
There were many conversations like this during the 1st 2 days in the cabin. I sat down with my nephew and had a 15 minute conversation about synonyms et. al. We then played some games over the next few days with all the kids where I would name a word and they would try to come up with as many other words as they could to describe the same thing.
At the end of the vacation the kids were eating dibs and M said to me without prompting "Aunt Kristy, do you know that we can call dibs dibs, or ice cream, or a snack, or a dessert and all those words would be ok?" He definitely got it!
I had an arguement with my son yesterday. I was mad because I asked him if he said "I wish the box would have crushed his legs." He was having a fight earlier in the day with his brother and I was just hearing about it. He said "no, I did not say that." I told him that was a lie. I knew he did. My husband was there and told me. My son then said " I wished the box would have HIT his legs." I was so mad and sad at the same time.
I told him that the two sentences were basically the same thing. And asked him if he realaized that. I am not sure that he did. I tried to explain to him that everyday NT people (not autistic people) were not usually able to remember exactly what someone says all the time and he would have to learn to understand that if it is close to the same thing that it is close enough. (I hope this makes sense.)
I know this as a aspergers/autistic trait but I didn't realize that this was why he seemed to be lieing more the last few years. I didn't realize he was that exact about things!
Do any of your children do this too?
Sarah gets stuck on the exact word thing sometimes and I use the opportunity to tell her all the other words that mean the same thing:
Yelling & screaming & hollering are the same thing as well as throwing a fit & tantruming!
whining & fussing/
not now & later/
argueing & debating/
obsessing & talking about something over and over......ect:)
It could be he is not lying but stuck on the totally word phase used in the situation. Just keep adding more words that mean the same for him:)
Thank you both. These are both examples of what he does a lot of the time.
He is REALLY big on band names Like you said Kristy: It is a Sony PSP Keith would say. It's funny but not funny.
He know what synonyms are. And he does very good in English class in school, mostly A's. But I think he honestly believes that if he didn't say this or that exactly like you repeat it he is not lying. ( A loop hole) He is Mr. Exacto! Both suggestions are great. Thank you. We'll play a game with it.
Literalness is very common with kids on the spectrum. Often with little kids as well - my dd can often be very literal. But, like Shelley - I use it as a teaching moment to show them that words can mean virtually the same thing...