Things Graham says

In the early days of the blog, one of the key things I tried to do was capture the adorable things the kids said so that we could look back on it later in life and remember it. As the years have gone on and the kids spend more time with more people and become ever more socialized and products of their environment, there's been less and less of that. Of course, this process is more pronounced in Natalie, the fully neurotypical, more outward-facing child, who brings up to date slang into the house. Trying to remember some recent instances, but am faltering for the moment.

Graham, being on the spectrum and spending somewhat less time out in the world, preserves some of his distinctive idiolect. For example, at dinner if we ask him: "Graham, have you had enough to eat?" he'll almost invariably answer: "I'd say so." 

He also says "indeed" a lot, but I know where he got that (yours truly). Actually, it's funny, the other day I was coming downstairs out of my office and I heard him talking to Mary. I was struck by how much he sounds like me. Which is no surprise, really, because of course our accent matches those of the people with whom we interact the most, plus he shares a lot of DNA with me. But it was very striking.

One habit it has been hard to break him of is getting the idiom of respond to a negatively phrased question with a no. So I might ask him: "So you wouldn't say that Donald Trump is an idiot?" He will respond "Yes", as in "Yes, that's correct, I wouldn't". As opposed to "No I wouldn't," which is more idiomatic.The irony is, of course, that logically he is kind of right, as we can tell from the opposite idiomatic response "No, I would say he is an idiot," with a heavy accent on the word "no." Or, even better, but still really a standard response, "No no, I would say he is an idiot."

Good fun.