Bonfire

[dana]

Hi all,

 

I am sorry I haven't posted for a while. For us this was a very stressful time because we moved home yet again. On top of that it took 3 weeks for BT to instole thelandline and internet in our new home! This was our second moving home in 4 months. Luckily, we didn't have to change my son's school although we have to take him by car now.

 

Last night we were invited for a bonfire night. This was the first time my son (who is 11 now)participated in such event. He liked it very much and all the time was helping around the fire, puting dead leaves in it. While he was doing it he kept asking funny questions such as: do dead leaves suffer in the fire? Will they come back to life in spring? Will they have afterlife after they burn?

 

Dana

[coolblue]

Hi dana

 

Young children (usually around 3-5) often ask questions like this because they are trying to make connections between isolated bits of information they have picked up. To make sense of the world. They would know that leaves are 'dead' but they wouldn't know if dead leaves are the same type of 'dead' as animals or people. Because children with autism spectrum disorders often have problems with auditory processing and/or receptive speech, they quite often miss a lot of information that most young children pick up effortlessly very early on and have to fill in the gaps when they are older. Your son clearly has some concepts around the idea of death, but didn't see how leaves fitted in with those ideas. Perfectly sensible questions when you think of it in that way.

 

 

My son is always asking questions about things I assumed he would know about, like 'what's does washing up mean?' or 'where do stamps come from?' even though he could give you a run-down on Nobel prize-winning chemists. He had a number of ear infections when younger, so I suspect, with hindsight, that he might well have had quite a few episodes of temporary deafness and simply missed this kind of information. Even though he has helped with washing dishes and been to the post office more times than I can remember.

 

cb

[dana]

Thank you, Coolblue, for your reply.

 

There is something else my son asked me which was for me hard to answer. The question was:

The fruit and vegetables we eat, are they dead or alive? I told him if they are still fresh they are still alive and if they are dry and old thay are dead. His next question was: So if we eat them alive then do they suffer?

 

Dana