Bobby's World: Read the Book

Last night I went upstairs to lay in bed early. I was extremely tired because Bobby woke up the night before at 2 am and was up until almost 6 am. He finally fell back to sleep until I woke him up at 7:30 to get ready to leave for school.

I was in bed with the tv on when Bobby came in. He said something and I honestly wasn't paying that much attention to him. A second or two later it dawned on me what he had said.

Me: "What did you say?"
Bobby: "Read the book."
Me (excitedly): "You want me to read to you?????!!!!! I would love to read the book!!!!"

I turned off the tv, Bobby got in bed beside me and I read to him his favorite book from his toddler days...Baby Duck and the Cozy Blanket.

We actually went through a couple of copies of this book because there were only a few book that he would ever let me read to him. This poor copy of the book is taped together with clear packing tape. The astonishing part of the conversation is that this is not a phrase that we are working on in therapy. "Books" is one the flash cards that he works on, but not the word "read." He strung them together in an appropriate phrase!!

He has requested that I read this book to him in the past, but not for a really long time. However, by requesting, I mean that he handed the book to me without any verbalization.

After I read the Cozy Blanket book twice he got out of bed and got into the night stand where I have more children's books stashed and he got another of the allowable books and gave it to me and this time he said, "I Love You Stinky Face" which is indeed the title of the book. I laughed and sad, "I would love to read this to you."

We laid in bed and read the book twice and he got down and started shuffling through the other books that he pulled out onto the floor. The beautiful moment of reading books to Bobby was gone. But, it happened in the first place and was verbally requested by him!!!!!!!

This morning he laid in bed and read the books to himself. I would have loved for him to ask me to read them again, but happy that he is paying attention to books in any way.