Something to Chew On

“Can I have some gummies?”

Ari made this request as she and I were out grocery shopping. I admit, it’s hard for any kid to resist the fruit snacks—especially since the shelves featuring the faces of Cinderella, Jack Sparrow, Hello Kitty and other fictitious friends looked like they belonged in Toys R Us.

(Just to give you an idea of her level of expectations, Ari used to call the store Toys For Us.)

I told Ari no. And about ten seconds later she asked, “Can I have some gummies?”

I explained to her that I was saying no because the snack was bad for her teeth and we could choose something else.

“Can I have some gummies?” she asked again.

OK, now I was getting angry. “Ari, I’ve already answered your question,” I told her. “Please don’t ask me again.” Did that stop her from—

“Can I have some gummies?”

I kid you not—before I could even push the cart out of the aisle she had asked for the gummies four times.

The thing that concerned me wasn’t so much the frequency of the request—but the fact that she never rephrased it. Another child would have tried a different tactic such as, “Please can I have some gummis” or “Why can’t I have gummies?” That would have been perfectly normal behavior for a kid. But the fact that she simply repeated the same request made me suspect something wasn’t right.

I knew her hearing was fine—it was checked when she was two years old. But because of the way she’s always mixed up her words (“What that is?”) or left words out of her sentences (“Where daddy going?”) I’ve long wondered if there was some kind of processing problem. Today, at the supermarket, seemed to be one more indication that something was wrong.

Well, besides the Care Bears fruit snacks, that is.

Kung Pao Confusion

It was somewhere between the won ton soup and the kung pao chicken when I knew something wasn’t right.

My parents were visiting from New York and we were all at the kitchen table eating take-out Chinese for dinner. Ari leaned over and whispered in my ear, “I don’t remember their names.”

She was referring to my parents, her grandparents, who she speaks to by phone, receives packages from, and visits with on a regular basis. Her question left me anxious and disturbed—much the way I imagine she felt at not being able to retrieve their names. But I leaned over and whispered back in her ear, “Grandma Tommye and Grandpa Sandy.” Satisfied, she said, “Oh, OK,” and went back to eating her spring roll.

If Ari had phrased her question differently, if she had instead said, “I forget. Are they your parents or dad’s parents?” I wouldn’t have been concerned; kids get that kind of thing mixed up. But there was something about how she asked it, that she felt self-conscious about it, that made me concerned.

When I shared this story with my friend Kim, she suggested that maybe Ari had ADD. I started laughing. “Are you manic?” she asked. “Yes,” I said. “I even have the title of my next book all picked out—Me and the ADD Three.”

I had previously spoken with Diane, Ari’s speech therapist, about my concern about Ari’s social language skills. She was constantly interrupting people. And she had a hard time waiting for someone to respond to her. I referred to Ari as a “verbal bulldozer” and realized that I used this same phrase at one time to describe Max.

Back when Ari was diagnosed with apraxia, Dave and I weren’t too surprised to see her following in Max’s verbal footsteps. Now I was faced with the possibility that she might share his other challenges, too.

What does Ari’s future hold? I don’t yet know. The answer wasn’t in the fortune cookies, that’s for sure.