Two nights ago I did a presentation on Autism and Discipline for the local support group. This morning, I am vividly reminded about everything I talked about that night. It's barely 9 am on a Saturday morning and already the boys are at it. Ewan and his brother are attempting to recreate the World Wide Wrestling Federation matches of the 80s in my living room.

Why you might ask?

Because Vaughn said he was holding a fire stick and pretending he was in a cave when Ewan said quite loudly and with much authority, "It is a PENCIL with a BIG eraser Vaughn. It's not a fire stick. And my room is just a room, THERE IS NO CAVE!"

His brother did not like this bucket of cold water reality thrown on to his imaginative state of being and thus decided to jump on Ewan's head.

Two worlds often collide with Ewan and Vaughn--reality and imagination. Vaughn is filled to the brim with imaginative ability and pretend play. His whole life, every day, from sun up to sun down is filled with pretend. Objects becoming something other than what they really are. Pencils becoming fire sticks, rooms becoming caves, all set to a variety of sound effects and conversation emanating from Mr. Vaughn.

But for Ewan, a pencil is a pencil. It can never be a fire stick. He is the yen to Vaughn's yang. For Ewan, objects are what they are, it is what it is and nothing more. It's all actually very simple according to Ewan--why go about complicating matters by saying something that's not true?

Discipline in this situation must guide Ewan to understand that Vaughn sees the world differently than he. This is a hard sell for someone so grounded to reality. In the end, we have to teach Ewan that it's ok if his brother wants to call a pencil a fire stick and a room a cave and that's a long discussion indeed.

*In ASD, children use objects functionally rather than to symbolically represent something else. So a pencil is a pencil and nothing else. By 18 months of age children should be using objects as symbols for something else and it would be considered a red flag if a child age 18 months to 36 months fails to develop this type of representational or symbolic play.