Conversation

photo credit-antony_mayfield
creative commons license

So, we were all sitting and watching a video tonight from the library about slavery during the 1600's in America. It was really well done, and quite fascinating. Did you know that during this time period 20% of the population of New York was African-American? And that Carolina had twice as many slaves as there were whites? I never saw any of that in my history books in school.

Buddy Boy was doing what he usually does, which is add his own running commentary (actually, it's more like interjecting facts he knows-or thinks he knows-about the subject). At one point he says "Mom, I have to tell you what I was going to tell you about before". "Can it wait?" Liz asked. "No, I need to tell you right now." "Is this something I won't like?" (we've been working on trying to get Buddy Boy to filter out some of the naughty words he likes to repeat-usually silly stuff regarding genitals and potty humor). "No, you'll like it." "OK, what is it?" Liz asked. After a pause Buddy Boy said, "That's OK, I won't tell you now." "No, that's OK, (putting the video on pause) you can tell me". "No, mom, I'll tell you later." "Why don't you want to tell me now?"

"Because it doesn't have to do with what we're watching".

I was speechless. This is the kid who loves to ramble and free associate from one subject to the next, and seemingly randomly go back to something he was discussing 3 days ago, and has real problems with taking turns in a conversation. And he had stopped and considered that maybe it wasn't the most appropriate time to discuss something. I've never been aware that he's done that before! Ever!

I thought it was way cool. No out and out prompting, no modeling, just decided to do it himself, out of the blue.

After complimenting him on being so thoughtful, we had to find out what he so wanted to tell us. It had something to do with grapes.