"It's a duck!"

As a single Mum of three kids, one with confirmed Aspergers and another suspected while the other well and truly a NT keeping to routines can at times be our saving grace! Each night we have a definite routine that we stick to to ensure that my two who loathe sleep and struggle to give in to the night time necessity of slumber can be as calm as possible to facilitate it's arrival.

When we return from school/ Work/ Childcare the kids can play while I prepare dinner. Then when dinner is called the toy areas are closed for the night. They are not to return and play once dinner starts. We eat dinner and watch one tv show a night which is Dance Academy on ABC3. Once that is over the tv is turned off. After dinner is the showers and then the boys run around in a nude and crazy state while I progressively go from understanding, reminding Mum of what they should be doing to a screaming banshee telling them what to do. They then complain about why I need to scream and A1 usually watches this scene rolling her eyes ;) (she's 6 by the way! ;) ) .

The boys then get into bed and A2 grabs as many books as possible for me to read and then we negotiate down to two or three only. Complaints stop eventually only because if they don't stop and he accepts not all are to be read then he is to have none read at all. Finally we settle down to read.

This one particular night A2 chose two Pamela Allen books which he had not heard before. One of them was Fancy That! .

If you haven't read this book with your toddler then we highly recommend it. So the story was progressing and A2 was right into it and finally we got to the page on which it was revealed what the chicken was "took took"ing about throughout the book. She was sitting on eggs which had hatched and had some brand new chicks.

So I read the page, then with joy and exclamation in my voice and radiating from my face I asked A2, "What are they?" . Imagine Nonni Hazelhurst and the highest amount of wonder and joy she could exclaim! That was me. A2 looked at the page, looked at me with an incredibly serious face and then back at the page and matter of factly stated, "They's Ducks!"

Suffice to say the joy and wonder turned to laughter as K and I laughed and laughed at his exclamation and tried to explain that they were in fact chicks, which were baby chickens while he barely tolerated our idiocy exclaiming that, NO as usual we were wrong, he was right and they were ducks. I mean they are yellow, PEOPLE! Sheesh! ;)

That night he did receive his wish to be read three books...the third being his A to Z dictionary of Animals ;) (he's not the only one who likes to be right ;) )