Mafe Maria: Personal stories by autism parent mentor, Maria Stultz

Overheard in the bathroom

Joaquin is getting more and more mobile, and giving him a bath on your own is becoming more and more difficult: Baby wants to sit up, and he loves to lean to the side to touch and play with the container of fresh water we keep by the bath tub to rinse the soap and shampoo off of him. Even the only–water mini–bath I give him some mornings when he’s puked or peed all over himself is tricky, since baby loves to hunch over the water, and I’m continuously wrestling so he doesn’t get his face underwater.

It’s bedtime, and Joey has begun Joaquin’s bath on his own while I buzz back and forth between our bedroom and Joaquin’s bedroom preparing the stuff we need to have at hand as soon as he comes out of the water. As I leave and enter the bath site, I hear truncated snippets of the dialog between Joey and Joaquin.

Joaquin throws an irate squeal (his signature sound, a large percentage of his current vocabulary). Joey promptly talks back to Joaquin. I’m far so I can’t hear what he’s saying. As I come near the site, Joey’s calm professor–of–life voice becomes clearer:

“… That’s the thing about water, Joaquin: You can’t breathe in it”.

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One comment:

  1. On , Joey wrote:

    We put a small vat of water next to his tub. We use this to rinse him off. We’ve put little rubber toys in there to entertain him. He likes to splash the water and watch them move, and pick them up and suck on them. That night he grabbed the toy and dunked it underwater. Rather than pick it up and put it his mouth, he decided to put his mouth to the toy…. which was underwater. Whoops. That’s how Joaquin learned he can’t breathe water!