Understanding emotions

One new word that my son has picked up is "funny". His mum was playing with him in the playroom and he suddenly said "funny!" laughing loudly. The significance hit me when we discussed it later. The fact that he understands that the word "funny!" refers to something humorous and uses it meaningfully and spontaneously without prompting is a landmark.



Understanding and verbalising emotions can be really difficult for children with autism. They also often have problems regulating and expressing their emotions and that's when meltdowns happen.

Sometimes when he's tired or stressed, he will start whining a bit (I won't call them tantrums because they are not). These are solved by either a cuddle or by giving him a bottle of his soya milk.

Another development is telling us when he's in pain. He does this by puffing and asking us to blow at the part of his body that's painful. Often a few puffs would be sufficient, at other times when it's a bit more painful, would require us to puff a bit longer. He also tells us when he's itchy and lifts his shirt asking us to scratch his back saying "itty! itty!".

You can understand why we are so excited and we wish we had the funds to do more.