So what's the title mean? - Peter Dean

  It took me awhile to come up with a title for this blog, but the title certainly fits our son. Nick has always had a thing for numbers. I can remember when we were living in Chincoteague Virginia, I called Dawn at work to see if she could hear what I thought I was hearing. Nicholas was at the stage when kids start to say single words that usually only their parents can understand. He was sitting in our living room watching Dora (the only show that ever caught his attention) and playing with some small toys. I heard him babbling to himself and sat down next to him. Slowly I realized he was repeating a few "words" over and over again. It sounded like "Wa, To, Fee, Do, Fie," and after the third time I thought for sure he was counting to five as Dora had just done on the show. So I called Dawn and had her listen but she could not really hear it at first. I tried saying the numbers with him and sure enough he looked up at me and smiled in recognition as he said his sounds with me. Dawn was astonished as she listened over the phone.

  Little did we know this would just be the first of many times Nick would amaze us with his ability with numbers. He was doing multiplication when he was 6. He loves to count things like the number of steps it takes to get places, like from room to room or to cross a road. He also loves number conversions. He tells me every time I watch football that the field is 100 yards long, which is 300 feet. Or that we have been out of the house for 2 hours, which is 120 minutes.

 People who are diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome will have a focus of interest. One thing that they will always come back to and try to learn as much about as possible. We now believe that numbers and conversions is Nick's focus.  Almost every conversation with Nick will involve numbers of some sort. In many cases it is easy to slip them into a conversation without the other person even realizing it. When he talks about his video games he can talk about the points he scored or the level he got to. When he talks about sports he will tell me how many feet the yards are or how much time the play took off the clock or how many hits it took the golfer to get the ball in the hole. When he tells me about school he can tell me who the fastest kid during PE was and who was 2nd fastest and third.  At night he can tell me that it is still 13 minutes until bedtime and count them down as it gets closer.

For Nick, it is always about numbers.