0xC9: Benjamin's Blocks

Benjamin is a bit of an enigma sometimes. He has autistic symptoms but more than that. Benjamin has always been delayed in things like gross and fine motor skills, and from what Karen and I have read, there's very little to link delayed motor skills with autism. It has been brought to my attention that new studies have just recently linked lower gross motor skills with autism, but there is not a lot of data. These studies look at children after they have been diagnosed with autism and found that some (20% or so) have lower muscle tone. It's exciting to see studies like this because it does point to Benjamin, but not entirely.

For example, he has just now started playing with blocks by stacking them. Neurotypical children (like his sister) tend to play with blocks like this at about two years. It's not a rule, just a tendency. Benjamin is five (six in March) and he has stacked blocks in school under direction from teachers, but this new behavior is different. He gets out the blocks and spends hours stacking them, knocking them down, and stacking them again. His approach to them seems almost like problem solving. He seems like he's stacking them to see how high he can get. On the carpet, he doesn't get more than five or six. Knowing Benjamin, he'll be stacking blocks until he's seven, then he'll move on to the next stage.

So while a one-year-old can stack blocks, a two-year-old typically plays by stacking blocks. Developmentally, in this particular area, Benjamin has been one, and now he is developmentally two (with blocks, anyway).

Benjamin has always shown progress like this. He takes a long time to reach a developmental milestone, then he camps there for a very long time. This is why I've always had hope. It might take him longer than most children, but he will get there with time. He has always progressed, just not at the speed people like.

It seems like he started getting interested in blocks after one of his favorite electronic toys broke from overuse. There's a lesson there for us, I suppose. Or maybe that was just a coincidence.