Just over a month ago, as I was gearing up for Autism Awareness month, Wayne came to me one morning and said, "Did you hear what Liam said last night?" I had no idea what he meant, but he told me he thought that Liam had several times referred to himself as a "retard"...
That's not a word we ever use in our house, and I had no idea where he could have picked up a word like that... he's with me almost all of the time he isn't in school and I couldn't imagine any teacher or fellow classmate in Liam's PIC class using that word...
I knew that I had to at least speak to his PIC teacher to give her the heads up that he was using that word, and in the context of identifying himself that way... I hadn't heard him use the word, but I knew that Wayne was sure of it...
She promised to have a conversation with the Kindergarten teacher whose class the PIC kids are paired with for PE and library, but couldn't imagine it coming from there either... I started scanning my memory for another opportunity - or several (because Liam learns best by repeated patterns) and kept drawing a blank...
I keep in regular contact with Liam's teacher and she texted me that she'd solved the mystery - I was stewing for almost a half hour until I saw her ... Wayne was right - Liam was referring to himself as an "R" word...
But it wasn't that R word... it was "RACE CAR"... he was going around pretending to be a race car... and telling everyone that's what he was... and with his speech impairments... it sounded like...
I know that I can't prevent Liam from ever having words in his vocabulary that I don't approve of entirely, especially since I sometimes slip up and use a curse word in times of stress... but there is something that can be done so that the only R word he ever uses that even remotely sounds like Race Car is Race Car... and it's by signing a pledge and sharing information at http://therword.org/ - a site dedicated to removing the word retard from everyone's vocabulary when speaking about another person.
Please visit, sign the pledge and consider helping to spread the word about the R word campaign before I am ever faced with the possibility that Liam will come home and actually say "I am a retard" because he learned it in school or elsewhere!
