Of Slang Words, Idioms, and Autism

Symphony in Slang from Lee Presson on Vimeo.

In 1951, MGM released a cartoon called a Symphony in Slang, written by Rich Hogan and directed by Tex Avery.  The story of this short video is about a young man named John Brown, who came to heaven with his life story, but to St. Peter and Noah Webster's discomfort, the way he told his story was so peppered full of idioms and slang that they imagined it as literally as they could.

I watched this as a child and found myself relating more to Peter and Webster more than I did with Brown, simply because I was so young when I first watched it on TV.  Nonetheless, this cartoon went deep in my mind and sort of stayed dormant until a few weeks ago.  I was lying in bed next to my husband and mentioned this cartoon because of the idioms that came with it.

It was during this conversation that I realized that this is probably one of the best ways to get people to understand how a person with autism processes language.

In the whole time of the short film, Brown spoke in slang and idioms, starting with how he was born with a "silver spoon in [his] mouth", to not being able to "cut the mustard" at his first job, to having the woman he loved get "on her high horse", reconnect with an "old flame", give birth to "a bunch of little ones" and finally to have him "die laughing".  Each time Webster, listening to his story, imagined it literally to the T.

And this was how I processed information as a child!  When someone said it was "raining cats and dogs", I would look out the window in excitement, thinking this was my chance to get a new pet dog or cat, and feel intensely disappointed because all I saw was raindrops.  It wasn't until I was in middle school that my English teacher spent a few weeks in class teaching us about idioms that I finally realized that these were not to be taken literally, that "hold your horses" actually means slow down and has nothing to do with an actual horse.

If I am on the spectrum, then I suppose this was what many authors of books talking about autism mean when they advise talking to children on the spectrum as literally as possible, because they're not going to understand the literary play on words behind what you say.  Much as how Webster imagined Brown actually sitting beside Anger, our children on the spectrum will do the same.

You see, order is important to people, neurotypical or otherwise.  And the term symphony, though used mostly in music, refers to order and structure.  I'm not saying everyone should be robotic, but let's be realistic, we all have routines and habits we form that brings great comfort to us.  It makes us feel that we have some form of control over ourselves, and admittedly it does make us feel better when things around us seem out of control.

But when that order is disrupted and confusion happens, we get stressed out.  And we tend to do things we don't normally do when we're stressed.  And using idioms and slang does cause a lot of confusion.  Remember when you were a teenager growing up and you used to snort in disdain when your parents didn't understand what you we saying?  Well, I was the receiving end of that as a young woman, from my classmates and peers, when I didn't understand what they were talking about.  It wasn't pleasant at all and caused a lot of discomfort.  My brain was going, "They're speaking in English/Filipino, I know the words, but why can't I understand what they mean?!"

And I think this is how most children on the spectrum feel.  Confusion is never a nice feeling.  And then we wonder why they act up and have a meltdown.  They're obviously stressed, and being treated with disdain is not exactly the way to go about it either.  I'm not saying treat them with kid gloves, am saying that if they don't understand, then calmly and patiently explain as many times as necessary.  They will get it, sooner or later.

So let's not cause confusion with the words we use around children on the spectrum.  Especially if said child is non-verbal, or even verbal but not conversant, like R is, it's important for us to keep language as clear as possible when we speak to our children with special needs.  We want them to see life, language, family and relationships as a symphony, something to be wholly enjoyed, savored and learned the way God intended it to be.

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