Is It A Literal Or Figurative Headache?
Why can't teachers, coaches and literary authors be more attentive to using idioms and figures of speech? Don't they know what kind of issues such careless use of words has on my son, diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, a form of high functioning autism?
...Oh, wait. I can't rant against the teachers, coaches and literary authors. We didn't even have the diagnosis for a week before both my husband and I frustrated our three and a half year old. First I told Jonathan to "hold his horses," to which he sincerely replied "But I don't have any horses." Next, my husband told Jonathan, "I didn't just fall off an turnip truck" to which our son replied "WHAT?"
"Jonathan, you love soccer, why don't you want to go to practice?" I asked him a year later, as I'm literally peeling his hands off the door frame so I can get him to practice. Turns out the coach always said "It's a piece of cake." Jonathan was disturbed by a man who, for no apparent reason, carried birthday cake around in his back pocket during soccer; at least that's what the four and a half year old mind conjured.
At five, we tried to convince the school system that his not understanding idioms and figurative language was going to "prevent him from accessing his free and appropriate education." He would stop paying attention to the instruction because he would either be anxious about cats and dogs potentially falling from the sky or he would be giggling over the image in his mind of someone's eyes being glued to the TV. After spending tens of thousands of dollars in attorney fees and expert witnesses, we decided to pay a private speech pathologist instead.
Our son received the diagnosis of "Asperger's Syndrome" because intellectually he's at least two years in advance of his peers, while socially and developmentally he was several months to two years behind them. The result, according to our speech pathologist, was that intellectually he was understanding that idioms and figures of speech do not make any logical sense about four years ahead of his peers. And, instead of ignoring what he did not understand, he tried to ascribe meaning to them, which either caused anxiety or perplexity.
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