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The Silent Treatment

In my therapy sessions for my Masters program, I've noticed that even young girls have cultivated "The Silent Treatment." One of my girls needed to make up a session she had missed, so I pulled her with one of my better-natured, easygoing boys about her own age and with similar goals. We were doing a sensory activity that tends to make the boy (we'll call him "Randy") very silly. Randy has an Autism diagnosis and is one of my favorite students to teach because we do sensory activities all the time. I am a very tactile person anyway, so his session is like a work-play session for me. The little girl ("Sarah") is usually very mature and has frequently informed me that the activities I have planned are "for babies." She is also good natured, but in a very different way. The other day, Randy was busy wiggling and crowing over the toys we were describing and then burying in a box of dried beans, when Sarah stopped dead in the middle of one of her sentences. I was interested to see what was going to happen, so I watched.

Randy wiggled and giggled for a few seconds after she stopped talking. He eventually noticed how silent the room was, so he met her gaze (a hard task for some AU kids) and promptly settled down and asked her a question about the toy she was holding. As soon as Randy chilled out, Sarah resumed what she was saying with perfect clarity. I was amazed.

I guess women really learn how to manipulate even the most inattentive men early on in life!

Comments

  1. UnknownMarch 21, 2013 at 12:58 PM

    You said "super duper" and I thought it was something completely different than it was until I visited your blog! In the speech pathology world, Super Duper is a giant supplier of products such as articulation flash cards, toys, and SLP tools :)

    ReplyDelete

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