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.