The Lookout

The lookout! NonVerbal Autistic ESP 

I am not generally a believer of extrasensory perception, ESP.

However, there are some things that occur that make me feel there are things we don’t understand. If you take away one of a person’s senses, eyesight or hearing are the usual examples, that person’s remaining senses improve. That has been scientifically studied and proven. I wonder, if you remove a facet of a person’s ability to communicate, will other communicative abilities make up for it? My sons are both nonverbal autistic. While my oldest will repeat one syllable words, my youngest has never spoken. Somehow they communicate with each other. They plan heists, usually cookies or other sweets. My funniest example is the first time I caught them. I would see my 2 year old at the time stick his head out the kitchen door, smile, giggle, and go back to hiding. After the third time, I got suspicious. Yeah, I know, the silence from the other one should have clued me in. So, I sneak around the back way and to my surprise I see my oldest son teetering on his tippy toes on the chair reaching for the cookie jar on top of the refrigerator. My youngest son was obviously acting as the worst lookout. To this day, I regret my next action. Worried about the precarious position my oldest son was in and taking my responsibility as protector of cookies and appetites, I shouted, “what are you doing?” my oldest looks at me in horror and quickly gets down. My youngest never looked back, running straight ahead to his room.

To this day, I wonder, what would have been the plan if I got up to go into the kitchen the normal way. How would the lookout have warned his brother?

The Lookout NonVerbal Autistic ESP

Armando Sandoval
The Autism Society of Texas-El Paso
https://www.facebook.com/AutismSocietyEP/

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