(no subject)

[lobosolo]

Our younger grandson had his fourth birthday yesterday. Davy is a cute little guy, very good-natured and cheerful but distinctly odd. For a start, he isn't toilet-trained yet. He doesn't really interact much with other people except for his older brother Tom. He plays on his own for hours, in a compulsive way, with toy soldiers or animals, and pays no attention when people talk to him. His parents have had him tested for deafness, but his hearing is fine. We thought at one time that he might be autistic, but if so then he doesn't display many of the standard symptoms. He doesn't talk at all, except to babble away in his own private language which nobody but Tom is able to interpret. What really worries us is the fear that he might be brain-damaged. He had a difficult birth and there is the possibility that he may have been starved of oxygen at one stage.


Also, he is extremely finicky about food, and scarcely eats anything. Some time last month Jo was trying to get him to eat a mouthful of lunch, which he refused. She pleaded with him to try it, but he wouldn't. "Oh go on, Davy, try just one mouthful," she said. Davy looked at her and said, very carefully and distinctly, "I would not, could not, with a goat." (Aficionados of Dr Seuss will recognise the allusion.) That was three weeks ago. Since then he hasn't spoken, but now we know that he can when he wants to.

He may be an odd little kid, but somewhere inside that mysterious brain there's a bit of a joker waiting to emerge.