Be Careful with Your Words!

Nadia Shanab | Uncategorized
23 Jan 2013

Today’s Anecdote

While so engaged in working with a student on a math assignment I made one of the most common mistakes. I’ve spontaneously used an idiomatic metaphore that I don’t finally regret -at all- having used it. It is up to the reader to tell whether this was a mistake or not.

The student had just finished a math worksheet and  was giving it back to me. To encourage her to do another one, I told her as I was handing it to her: “This is a piece of cake for you, it won’t take you a minute.”

The student with a big, beautiful smile was looking at me with shiny, wide, shooting eyes, full of astonishment and excitement, as if she was waiting for something to happen. She was beaming! I’ve immediately realized that I’ve said something that was irrelevant or out of the context. Knowing the student, there was nothing to be so excited about doing another math worksheet late in the afternoon.

As I traced back what I said: “This is a piece of cake for you”, I realized that I was already in trouble. But looking at her beautiful face I kept laughing and apologizing on the same time, repeatedly. I told her: ” I am very sorry I didn’t mean that I have a piece of cake for you. I just meant that the work is easy to do for you.”

But the student still kept staring at me and looking in my hands, scanning me from head to toe, then she asked: “But don’t you really have any cake here?” I simply replied: “I’m sorry I don’t.”

To my biggest amazement, she started laughing with me, there was no disappointment, no bad feelings, no meltdown, no tantrum. She kept her beautiful smile, then shaked her head from left to right, then grabbed the second math worksheet an started working on it. Her behavior and body language was sending me a message: “I got your joke!”

Today I learned that there is no one simple rule to apply to everybody all the time. Even though this student is literal and I usually try to be very specific when talking to her, today she had an “open window” in her mind to accept and receive something new.

That was a precious moment for both of us. We had a good laugh, and luckily it was a brilliant moment and timing for her to acquire a new skill. Namely: “Same words can have different meaning than the way I’ve learned them.” I know that typically what I’ve said can end up in a temper tantrum crisis, but today I learned that I can try to be more courageous and take chances in small dozes.

There is always hope and nobody really knows how much children with autism can develop and learn. Let’s keep trying to help them reach their full potential.

I am relieved, it was a happy ending!

nadia shanab

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