Conversation Can Be Hard

I am a talker... conversation comes easy to me and I love to share my thoughts and learn what other people are thinking and feeling. Kaya is even more outgoing than I am. Even Phoenix seems to enjoy people - he greets his friends and teachers when he arrives at daycare and says hi to neighbours when we pass them in the neighbourhood. But for Liam it's much harder. Conversation does not come naturally to him - in fact it can be a special kind of torture for him.

We have lived in the same neighbourhood his whole life and spend a great deal of time at Holland Bloorview Kids Hospital where he is a popular kid. Everywhere we go we see his number-one pet peeve - acquaintances. Liam dreads running into acquaintances and being expected to go through the ritual of small talk. Liam has been known to growl, yell, grimace, or stick out his tongue at any number of friendly people who greet him in his daily travels. Ever since he was young, "hi's and 'how ya doing?'s have bothered him.

A little while ago Holland Bloorview created a lovely web bio about our family (click HERE to watch it) and he is a bit of a celebrity of sorts there. Everyone knows a lot about him and he doesn't know them - and that kinda freaks him out. He goes there every week for therapy and frequently for other appointments on top of it.

So last week I sat down and I had a think. What can I create for Liam that would help him connect with people and break the ice? I came up with the idea of conversation cards... Here's how they work; Liam chose 8 questions that he might like to ask people and we created little cue cards.

This is what Liam wants to talk about.

It took a bit of brainstorming but he was able to come up with some great ice breaker topics that would give him and his acquaintances something to relate to.

I cut the cards out, laminated them and put them in a ring...

We've tried them out at Holland Bloorview twice, and so far they've been a success!! There's always little things that we can work on - Liam insists that people answer EVERY question and I'm not so sure that he's actually listening to the answers. But they do seem to break the ice and give him a way to relate to people.

Ready for conversation at Holland Bloorview.