Our autistic young-adult daughter spontaneously used an idiomatic expression in a sentence yesterday again, around 2 months after starting ginkgo biloba and citicoline, this time saying "No siree, no siree Bob". This was in response to my pulling a stretchy-fabric with black gaiter from my neck up to my head, which momentarily looked like I had a spooky criminal mask like people wear to rob gas stations or something like that when they put on panty hose or a ski mask, and she reacted saying to take it off an saying she was scared that I was going to hurt her or kill her, it was then I realized the stretchy gaiter, which I was briefly having trouble getting off (it was tight, too long etc.), made me look like a criminal wearing panty hose or a ski mask on my face as she's likely seen in movies or the news (the gaiter had several partially transparent mesh sections), then approximately (from recollection since I'm doing this the next day):
- I said, "I'm not going to hurt you, I'm not that kind of person."
- She responded, "No you're not that kind of person."
- I agreed again, "No, that's not who I am. I'm your mom and we're friends. I wouldn't hurt you."
- She concurred, with relief, "No siree, no siree Bob!", agreeing with me, then added, "not like the mutant ninja turtles with the masks" and made a few other comparisons.
I asked where she heard that expression from and she couldn't remember.
I was shocked to hear a normal idiomatic expression ike "No siree, Bob!" coming from her, something I have either never said in my life of so rarely or long ago I can't remember doing so, likewise with her father and brother. It's just not something we say. So again, she is either picking up expressions from youtube videos or picked up what this meant from her former Son-Rise Program facilitators both volunteers and paid who we used to have work with her. This is how normal people/children learn language. They just hear it in context and their brain pulls it up on another similar context where the expression fits a similar situation. The supplements she's taking seem to be creating frequent new language expression.
Ginkgo is supposed to increase blood flow to the brain, while citicoline is a source of choline/ betaine/ phosphatidyl serine - it can branch to feed either the needs of the liver or the brain, based on what the body wants to convert it into. We all know autistic kids most likely were contaminated with heavy metals at a key time in development that prevented the formation of the brain's long-distance connections ("white matter", shown in studies to be lacking in autistic people), but how many remain in their liver and/or brains decades afterward? Can more choline help somehow detox the brain, or perhaps grow neurons more effectively around contaminated areas in the brain? Can improving liver function with choline and the betaine it can be converted into help the liver, which can start detoxing itself and or the brain?
Stay tuned and I'll post new developments.
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