Mystery Solved

So...I have this speech kid.

When I show up at the clinic on Wednesday afternoons, he's often sitting in my chair waiting for me.

I kind of adore him.

He reminds me of my brother Sam a lot.  

He has autism, and he's draws pictures of houses and public buildings (like city hall) and all the power sources and transformers coming from them.

He also has severe apraxia, which means that he has a lot of trouble with creating the motor patterns for speech, speaking clearly, producing intelligible words and saying certain sounds. However, the odd thing about apraxia is that then he'll be able to say an entire sentence  clear as day. 

Anyway, two weeks ago, he showed up to the clinic, went straight to the bathroom, shed his school uniform and came out wearing spongebob square pants pajama shorts, a blue tshirt, a grey vest with a hand drawn paper paw print stuck to his chest.  To complete the outfit, he had on black gloves.

I soooo wish I could share a picture of it with you. You'll just have to imagine.  It was so hard not to giggle, and I spent the entire session trying to ask the right questions and target the right activities to figure out what in the world he was wearing.  The vest apparently originated from a vampire costume, so that was all we could get out of his brother.  

Fast forward to last Wednesday where he was waiting in my seat that afternoon. I got out my computer and he asked for "I want coloring picture, please" and then gestured to his paper where he'd drawn what he wanted me to find a graphic on google for. This is a routine for us.  He prints it out, colors it, cuts it out, we discuss it and then he covers it with contact paper. 

We have spent many sessions coloring WB logos and covering them with contact paper! :)

His paper had more pawprints like the one on his vest and he'd written WILDKRATTS under it.  

I figured he was obviously misspelling it, and I googled wildcats and came up with a bunch of sports logos for wildcats. 

It was obvious that was NOT what he was looking for.

I finally turned the computer over to him and said, you type it in. 

He typed in WILDKRATTS. Any of you out there know what popped up?

I just about died!!! EUREKA!!!!!

shorts? check!

vest? check!

paw print logo? check!

blue shirt? check!

black gloves? check!

He was dressed up as one of the Wild Kratts brothers! Who are they? Apparently it's some PBS show that he obviously loves where they save animals and learn about them.  It made my day! All of us therapists were so excited to have solved the mystery, and all he wanted was to print out the picture, color it and laminate it with contact paper! :) 

I love my job. It was just what I needed to think, oh yeah. that's why I do this. 

I told you, I'm a sucker for this kid.

I so wish we could unlock all his words-there is meaning in everything he does.