Oh, the Noise! Noise! Noise! Noise!

If you've ever read the book or watched the movie of How The Grinch Stole Christmas, this may be a familiar to you.....

...All the Who girls and boys
Would wake bright and early. They'd rush for their toys!
And then! Oh, the noise! Oh, the Noise! Noise! Noise! Noise!
That's one thing he hated! The NOISE! NOISE! NOISE! NOISE!.......

Well, I can relate to Mr. Grinch's point on some level. Although my Ethan is not much on talking, he does not lack for making noise! In the last couple of weeks, I have realized just how much noise he makes!!!!

Most of my understanding of Ethan & his character/personality comes through observations. He can't communicate very well with his speech. Most of his vocabulary is canned phrases that we have practiced with him over & over again until he understands them. Then, he is usually able to do what they call "generalize" these phrases. For example, we worked very hard on "I want a drink, please." Before this, he would just bring us his sippy cup & shove it in our hands. Once he understood that if he needed something, he needed to use his words & ask us, he was able to carry this phrase into other parts of his life as well.....generalizing. Almost a year later, and he still uses this coined phrase......"I want help, please. I want to go to Steak-n-Shake, please. I want to stay home with Daddy, please." He has built onto it, but the same format is still used.

So, if I ask Ethan a question that we haven't worked on, he won't know the answer & he doesn't respond at all. Like today, I asked him, "Who gave you the Santa stamp on your hand?" He answered me with a teacher's name. Then, I said, "What did you do to earn a stamp?" And there was silence. This isn't a question that we have done before.....we have really been focusing on "who?" questions lately. This is why I must use my observation for most of my Ethan information. (And I think a lot of us use observation to learn about each other....autism or not.)

Anyway, back to the noise.....even though Ethan doesn't talk a lot.....that doesn't mean he is a quiet child. My house has noise going constantly! Any toy that makes any kind of noise at all, Ethan loves. And he will play it over & over & over again until the batteries wear out. BUT!!! It's never just one toy....it's usually THREE toys! And, he kind of acts like a DJ with turn tables....when one of the toys stops making the sound, he will immediately go to it & "fix" it so the noise starts again. Last week, his top three toys to play with AT THE SAME TIME were his Shake-n-Go cars, Playhouse Disney's new holiday online games, and a Musical Winnie the Pooh electronic-type game. Now, you may ask, why don't you turn one of them off or take one of them away. Well....that is something that I have tried! But, guess what happens! He will find ANOTHER toy that makes noise. And if he can't find a toy, he will make his own noise.

This past weekend, I was watching him play cars. This means he lines up his Hot Wheel cars one at a time on our big window sill. I was impressed because the only noise that was going on in the house was coming from the TV that Corey & I were watching. However, as I continued to watch Ethan, I noticed that he WAS making noise.....he was making cars sounds. But....these car sounds, I noticed, had a certain pattern or rhythm to them. Then, it finally dawned on me....instead of humming the song, he was making car sounds to the tune of the Menard's jingle. So funny! And right now, as I am typing this entry, Ethan is playing with a gears toy that makes music & turns gears, a musical, dancing Christmas chicken dressed as a reindeer, and a musical penguin that makes noise when you push him over & he pops back up. Nothing else is on....no TV or music. But this is one of the two times during the day that we "allow" Ethan his down time (after school & lunch), and so I just sit here listening to the Ethan symphony.

So, maybe I shouldn't be too hard on the Grinch.....I kinda get it.