Yes or No

Abbie doesn’t tell me “no” very often. I guess that’s the advantage of having a child with delayed expressive language skills. The tradeoff is she kicks and screams when “no” would suffice.

When I ask her a yes-no question, she usually repeats the key word back to me. For example:

“Do you need to use the potty?”
“Potty.”

Her answer isn’t a yes or no, it’s simply an acknowledgment that she heard the question. If I take her to the potty, she usually just plays with toilet paper.

Sometimes I do get a no out of her, though. It has to be a very obvious question with a very obvious answer. Her no is staccato, like she wants to spend as little time as possible addressing the question in hopes I’ll drop it. For example:

“Do you want to go to bed?”
“No.”
“Is it bedtime?”
“No.”