Dealing With “What do You Want”

Perhaps the most frustrating part of dealing with our particular child has been the “what do you want” routine.

Without the ability to communicate in other ways, he has developed a way of communicating which is to grab your hand and take you into a room where the object of his desire is located. Then we get to play a little game where we attempt to figure out which object it is.

For parents who are dealing with a child in similar circumstances I can recommend the following things:

First, make sure that anything you don’t want the kid to have or to harass you about constantly is in a locked cabinet.

Second, put the items that you do want the child to have regular access to in plain view, but just out of reach (so they don’t get into it and make a huge mess). That way the choices will be much more obvious.

Finally, before you give out the object, make the child give a sign or a word (any sound similar to the word is good). This really does encourage speech development.