About this blog.

My son was diagnosed with PDD-NOS at 24 months. I created this blog to bring meaning to the often-confusing label. Sometimes I have answers. Other times, just more questions.

Friday, August 7, 2009

Go sox!

Here, in New England, we are said to be stoic relative to others in, say, the midwest or the south. We don't feign pleasantries. We're not warm and welcoming to people we don't know. We keep to ourselves. As a general matter.

Unless you're wearing a Red Sox tee shirt, in which case puritanical stoicism gives way to two other Massachusetts traits: meatheaded-ness* and sports fanaticism. For the uninitiated, Massachusetts happens to be some sort of meathead mecca, for reasons I don't fully understand. Anyway if you're wearing a Red Sox tee shirt and it's the day of a game, perfect strangers have license to make remarks and engage you in conversation.

Which is fine, unless you have have a speech delay. I have blogged of my time as what I dub a "smile bully"; when Brad was 3 months old, I wouldn't leave him alone until he smiled. Well, what we have here are conversation bullies. People who won't be satisfied until they have elicited some sort of remark from Brad, like his favorite player or the anthem "go sox." Brad, of course, wants nothing to do with these well-intended people, understandably.

So I have resorted to taking the Red Sox shirts out of his rotation during game day. It's all I can do. Do you or yours ever get assaulted by conversation bullies?

*Patent-pending.

6 comments:

Jen said...

lol
Yeah, moving from the East Coast--CT--to INDIANA was a bit of a cultural shock at first.
We get the stranger thing, too, with Evan. Once, a woman behind us at a check-out touched his shoes to tell him how much she liked them...that didn't go over well.

Kris said...

I love your observations! When my older children were little I actually enjoyed conversations bullies b/c I felt like my kids were getting "practice" being polite to adults, etc.

However, when they approach Alec I cringe. He takes so long for him to process what they are saying it is awkward. Sometimes Alec becomes the conversation bully and asks questions like "What's your name?" "What are you doing here?" to adults who try to talk to him.
Yikes!

A little boy just 3 years old said...

OMG Kris.... so true. All week at the beach last week... "what are you doing? What are YOU doing? What ARE you doing? WHAT are you doing? What are you DOING?" until the 5 year olds came to me and said ...."He keeps asking me the same question. Make him stop."

Being in the south... conversation bullies are pretty much EVERYONE b/c it's just polite to speak to everyone, especially little kids and ask questions and expect response. I just answer for him and keep going.

Anonymous said...

I have an idea. In light of the Big Papi steroid thing going on, when Sox fans approach Brad, just tell him to say, 'Say no to drugs.'

indigo said...

striking up a conversation is an admirable thing, but not accepting that not every little kid will engage and persuing it to the nth degree is a little needy, imo. again- their problem, not brad's.

go sox! *...she yelled to the washing machine...*

Nyx said...

A little boy is sure right about the south! This is a regular occurrence here in Atlanta and wardrobe doesn't help. Now that my twins are 2-1/2 people really expect them to have little conversations with them. If I have both, it usually goes okay because my NT son kind of takes over and deflects attention away from my other son. But otherwise I make a LOT of excuses. I shouldn't have to, but if you don't want to have a 20 minute conversation about autism .... learned that mistake the hard way.