Spot The Script

As I've mentioned many times before, Mini Meerkat scripts. She memorizes lines from movies, books, and occasionally from what people around her have said and then uses them instead of original language. Her scripting is extensive but also fairly elaborate and subtle, because she usually uses the scripts in an appropriate context. If you aren't familiar with her vast source material, the extent of the scripting is easy to miss.

She also tends to save her really repetitive play scripting for when she is home and just with family. When strangers or doctors and therapists are around, she tends to be quieter overall. When it is just me and her, she can loop on the same bits of dialogue over and over for hours.

There are times when I know she is scripting but don't know what, and placing source the script has become a perpetual challenge. Sometimes I know the source right away, but other times it takes me longer to realize. She also reenacts segments of her favorites, and often times puzzling play or behavior turns out to be a reenactment.

When she is absorbing new material, she goes through a lull and her usual amount of scripting lessens. Once she has memorized it sufficiently, an explosion of new scripts and imitations follows.

Her current love is Brave. She has a little Merida doll and Queen Bear toy that have been coming everywhere we go. I am responsible for voicing Merida, and I hear, "Mom! Can you make Merida talk?" semi-constantly through the day. She has been particularly stuck on the scene when the Queen Bear holds up a dress and Merida has to tell the Queen Bear that she doesn't need a dress because she has fur. We replay this scene over and over and over and over and over.

She's also imitated holding up 4 fingers (like the Queen Bear) when she wants more food, tying people to things (like the little brothers tie their dad to the table), and scripting, "it's not fair!" or "you're a beast!" or "don't you dare!" when she's upset.

Those scripts come from the scenes in Brave with mother daughter conflict, which has given her words to match what she feels when I try to do something as offensive as giving her medicine, cathing her, or trying to do her enemas. She struggles to express how she feels, so I think it really helps her to have something to say. Even when the words don't quite fit, the feeling is there, and it gives her an outlet.

She has also started to build on some of the scripts and scenes, and a pair of pandas have joined in to back Merida up that bears have plenty of fur and don't need clothes. Scripting has given her building blocks that she is learning to arrange herself, and it is wonderful to watch that process.