Saturday, January 23, 2016

We as a family have little interest in board games in general, but we did recently buy a "The Hobbit"-themed game of Monopoly for our younger son's birthday, hoping to match the enjoyment we have had with "Sherlock"-themed Cluedo--ordered from the U.K. since there are no such versions of the identical Clue in the U.S.--for our daughter.

Because Anthony would of course not be able to play such a game, we set it up on the table and had him sit next to us with his own TV tray, turned to the side so he could eat his dinner and then use his iPad (and not sneeze on us).  But as the other four of us were focused on our turns and transactions, we suddenly noticed Anthony turned toward us and watching the proceedings intently.

To be completely objective, it is highly likely that Anthony's interest in the game was directed at the playing cards or paper money that he could potentially rip apart, or the game pieces that he might examine or tap on some surface.  But how it appeared to us was instead rather poignant: it looked like he wanted to join in.

Anthony has been with us for twenty years now, so naturally we tend to think we have a handle on who he is and what he can do.  Yet he still challenges our assumptions from time to time.  For instance, he recently surprised us by jumping up from his chair, going to the entrance where he had removed his shoes, taking them to the opposite side of the living room, and putting them in their proper place on the shoe organizer on the inside of the closet door.  We were amazed again a couple of days later to find that he had put his belt back in my closet where he apparently has seen that I keep it next to mine.

He also occasionally reveals an intellect that is amusingly infuriating, particularly given his inability to otherwise understand and perform simple tasks.  An example occurred the other day when he grabbed the remaining two bananas off the counter.  Before my wife could get them away from him, he had peeled both and taken one bite out of each.  And if left alone briefly in the kitchen--which we try to ensure he isn't--we may come back to find that he has used that unsupervised window to take a choice item from the refrigerator and eat it.  Then, of course, on a far more serious note, those who have read this blog from the beginning will remember that my first post detailed Anthony looking to see if I was around before attacking his mother.

We know of examples of autistic children who appear not to have the intellect, but in fact do have it locked up inside; they have been able to communicate intelligently via computer.  Unfortunately, we haven't seen that from Anthony--something is definitely awry other than lack of speech.  As I referenced above, he doesn't understand simple things like why we wash our hands or brush our teeth--yes, I have tried to explain it to him--so getting him to do so is essentially a lesson in mimicry, and one not well performed.

But if there is something that we're missing regarding what he understands, we certainly don't want to limit what we permit him to do because we haven't seen him do it.  So, we want to try to give him the benefit of the doubt when including him in our activities.  We know that he isn't going to get Monopoly or Cluedo.  But, if we're going to play a board game, maybe we can include him by finding one that works with simpler thought processes.  To that end, we looked for easier games at the thrift store, and among the ones we bought was a 10-in-1 game box including Chinese checkers.  If that doesn't work out, though, we may have to instead look for other family activities to do with Anthony, because our fallback purchase was a Bob the Builder matching pairs game.