L'Alfabeto

All little ones are obsessed with something or another. MB, for example, is obsessed with shoes; whether they are Daddy's shoes, my shoes, O's shoes, or her own, she will bring them to you and grunt whilst holding up a chubby little foot.

Hook a sister up, she says. Today, she wore a pair of her brother's shoes on top of hers.

That's love.

O, on the other hand, has many obsessions; it's part of the charm/ frustration of ASD. But perhaps none is so pervasive as his love of letters, numbers, and sequence. As a wee one, not much older than MB now, he used to pull down my Harry Potter series and the Left Behind books from the bookshelves. He'd line them up, end to end, in numerical order. We'd find him poring over these books with no pictures, right side up.

Oh, isn't that cute. It's almost like he's reading! said the parents that didn't know any better.

O's spoken language came directly from his hyperlexia; first, it was letters. Then, it was words (the infamous "zebra" on the fridge). Now, it's phonics. Combine this obsession with the fact that the child can type searches into You Tube, and you have a recipe for hilarity and obnoxiousness.

I have heard the alphabet so many ways, and in so many languages. Courtesy of beavers, and hamsters, and women who friended me on You Tube because of the sheer number of times we'd seen her video. (Hello, awkward; I'm Molly. Pleased to meet you.) I've heard a completely phonetical alphabet (ah, buh, cuh, duh, eh, fff, guh...), and many really repetitive ones (a is for apple, a, a, apple...), which doesn't come as much of a shock. Neither is it surprising when he starts saying the alphabet in the middle of the sacrament at church, or when he's stressed, or bored, or frustrated.

What is a shock, however, is how my super-visual boy learns from watching those videos. O isn't an auditory learner, for the most part; we've got a little labeling and a lot of parroting at this point. But you give him a video, or show him to do something, and it's on. As we sit and I write words - new words - on his magnet board, he works to sound them out.

Teacher. Children. Mini Cooper.

I watch his eyes rove over the letters as if they were some goddess, and then he works to make the sounds.

Kee-kuh. Eh-reh. Coo-puh.

***

The other night we were laying in bed, and I grabbed Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? and started to point at the phrases. A small little voice (complete with deliciously stimmy smacks) started to read to me:

Row beah, row beah, uh oo oo kee...

I listened, quivering with excitement. He barely looked at the pictures, reading instead the words as he placed his finger below each one. And suddenly, the 100 times a day we hear/ sing/ say the alphabet - it was nothing. It was all a means to an end.

L'Alfabeto è bello.

You're darn right it is.