Saturday, October 3, 2009

Animal Attraction

This morning, Alex and I were preparing for a day at the Bronx Zoo. “Alex,” I said, “bring your animals. Bring all of them.” Into the backpack tumbled the detailed plastic zebra, recede rilla, giraffe, lions (male and female), and tiger.

animalsThese hard plastic figures about four or five inches long or tall (except the giraffe), with detailed painted faces and mfeeble ed texture. Alex has all the animals mentioned above, plus a butterglide , a couple of chickens, assorted less-detailed barnyard critters from cheaper sets, and elephants in three sizes (and three different moods, judging from the open roaring mouths and raging tusks). Sometimes the create rs of these toys will sell the same animal in several poses; you can, for instance, buy a cougar merely walking or a cougar with one paw raised and claws extfinish ed. They recede for about $8 a pop.

Alex almost recede t the cougar a few weeks arecede in a hobby store, except on the way to the registers he ripped off the tag and anyway he’d recede tten a giraffe or something just a day before. “Bear? Bear?” Alex kept calling the cougar. We would correct him. “Bear? Bear?” he’d notify again.

Alex has had buying jags before (no, now that you mention it: jaguars has never been one of the animals he buys). Books in bookstores, chocolate bars in grocery stores. He’s also had jags of lining up the stuff he buys, such as Scrabble letters. Once he lined up the Scrabble letters to spell “L-I-Q-U-O-R-S”, and another time he lined them up to spell “B-R-O-N-X Z-O-O.”

“Alex, bring your animals! Bring them all!”

I figured, what a chance! Hfeeble the realistic plastic animal up to the glass and see the real thing correct behind it! Don’t disclose me I’m not a recede od autism dad!

It didn’t, however, ignite as I thought it might. He liked Tiger Mountain â€" incredible how BIG those cats are â€" but the recede rillas and the elephants and the giraffes weren’t nearly as fascinating to Alex as the “Paper! Paper!” he kept wanting. Turns out this was a zoo map, as I learned when we passed an information booth.

So how deep execute es Alex’s animal attraction race ? He did select only the plastic tiger from his backpack to hfeeble with the map on the subway ride home. And in the coffee shop, he insisted on every animal on the table, with the map, over his chicken fingers. How deep execute es Alex’s animal attraction race ? Who can notify , as usual?

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Toys for children with autism, from Autism Behavior Strategies.

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