Quirky Behavior

This is a video from last night. We were all in the kitchen, cooking dinner, and Corey pulled out his camera phone to capture Ethan. In this video, you will see a couple of things. 

First you will hear Ethan's speech. He has come such a long way thanks to speech therapy & hard work. However, his speech is still considered delayed as well as non-typical. In this video, Ethan is drawn to the comfort of a memorized speech....in this case a Pizza Hut commercial. This is very common at our house. You will also notice that in order to pull him out of that rote response, I use the commercial as the topic but engage him in a non-scripted conversation.


Also, you will see several odd behaviors. These are some of the red flags that caused us to wonder if Ethan had autism. Notice the big yoga ball? We use this as part of Ethan's OT at home. We use it for several different types of therapy.....rolling on it for balance, bouncing on it to wake up his system, rolling it on his body to calm his system, and so on. The thing you will notice, however, is how he is rhythmically "banging" his head on the ball. This is just something he does....we don't encourage it or discourage it.....we just pretend like he's not doing it & make sure he can't hurt himself. Most of the people that we have talked to say that this is self-soothing & Ethan needs it.

You will also see that at one point, Ethan runs into the living room & does a hand-stand on the couch. He does this A LOT! He LOVES to hang upside down. And typically he will do this for a longer length of time than seen here. Although it isn't in this video, Ethan also likes to spin in circles. These are all behaviors that Ethan exhibits that were considered "odd behaviors" at the Autism Diagnosis Clinic.

I hope this video doesn't disturb you, but rather informs you....this is my intent in posting this video. To us, this is typical behavior because this is just what Ethan does.....and I guess we are used to it. And I know it's not the "correct" answer, but come on.......who wouldn't put birthday cake on their pizza!!!!????