Copying vs Joining and autism (aka daughter pokes fun because mom is out of shape!)

I was folding clean clothes this morning, quite a lot of them. I gave my daughter the option of playing alongside me or helping me, and she chose to join me by playing alongside me for a while, and a few minutes later, she chose to join me by helping me as I folded the towels and washcloths.

(A side note: way back before we abandoned the discreet trial approach, I had our ABA consultant write a program for folding washcloths. I wanted to give my daughter a skill she could use to join us in something, anything. What I didn't understand was that sitting alongside us and using the copying skill of folding washclothes did not equal, or even come close to, joining us. This morning, as she was playing alongside me, she was joining me, and when she helped me accomplish my chore, she still was joining me, not copying, me.)

We each took a stack of towels and washcloths up two flights of stairs to the bathroom, and my princess dropped a bunch of hers on the way up. I told her we'd go back to get those in a minute, and when we got to the bathroom with what was left of our stacks of towels and washcloths, I was huffin' and puffin' from being out of shape. And my princess told me that I sounded just like a dog panting, and she put her hands in front of her like paws, dropped her tongue out of her mouth, and panted for me, poking fun at me. While I was putting away some of the towels, she said she'd go back for the items she dropped, (and in case you missed it, that's yet another marker of joining instead of copying) and when she came back, she set them down, looked at me with her little poking-fun-at-me-grin, and began to overexaggeratedly huff and puff, quite aware that huffin' and puffin' was not a rigid part of the routine, but a hilarious rendition of the evidence that mom needs to start exercising!

I asked her if she was making fun of me, and she said, YES!!!

Stinker! ;) (I love it!)