Mildly amusing things my son with ASD says

Today Bright Eyes was in a good mood and was full of chat. I was washing up and he had obviously just made a bit of a smell. You know what I'm saying, right?

"I think I'm related to a skunk," he said. 

"Really?" I said and we had a bit of a chat about how skunks smell bad. Then I laughed. "You realise that if you're related to a skunk, then I am too."

"No you're not," he said. "I'm related to a skunk but you're related to something different. We're all related to different things."

"Oh," I said. "Is that how it works? In that case I'm related to a beautiful pussy cat who loves to get patted."

Quick as a flash he came back to me. "Or you're related to a mean old witch."

(Just so you know, I wasn't offended, although I was surprised about the speed it came out at. I made a pretend shocked face and laughed and he laughed too.)

On a different note, I was really pleased with his observation about mealtimes this week.

We have a schedule on the fridge that tells us where we eat dinner on different nights of the week. Two nights are at the table, three are at the kitchen bench, and two are the ultimate favourites, where we get to eat in front of the TV.

Bright Eyes loves eating in front of the TV and I would have said he'd prefer to stay there every night of his night, until now.

We were sitting at the table last night, doing our usual conversation about 'what was the best thing in everyone's day'. I should add that this is often torturous and difficult and many times I've felt like giving up on trying to maintain a reasonable family conversation mostly because he's uninterested, rude or interrupting.

This time, however, suddenly he spoke up.

"There are good and bad things about eating in front of the TV," he said, announcing it to all of us.

"Oh really," I said. "What are they?"

"Well the good thing is you get to watch TV," he explained, "and the bad thing is you don't talk about what the best thing about everyone's day is."