Laughing with my child

I am told that when I write about my son with special needs, people get all teary-eyed.

Well, now. I do have to correct that.

Yes, there are many challenges in raising special children. But there are also many opportunities to laugh. And there are many times when he leaves me just smiling at the touching things he does.

My 11-year-old son leaves me laughing several times a day, as his observations and struggles with language sweetly bump together.

"Is it constipated?" he asked me the other day when I was putting a hot pack on my sore arm. "It's not good for your body to be constipated."

"That's right," I said. "But my arm is not constipated."

"Does it have an eye infection?"

When my husband left the bathroom fully dressed except for his shirt, he was greeted by our son in the hallway.

"Why are you half-naked?" he said to my husband, somewhat angrily, showing he felt some modicum of decency was being violated.

"I miss you so much I will blow up with gas," he wrote to me in a note while I was at work one day.

In another: "Mom + mom = kiss."

With a little heart next to it.

He loves hearts; in fact, expressing his love of all things is one of his hallmarks. His teachers tell me they have rarely met a sweeter boy, a compliment I cherish even more as he moves into his teens and kids get sometimes not-so-sweet.

I returned home from work one day to find the refrigerator door covered with dozens of tiny hearts he had drawn on computer paper and cut out. Each heart said something like "I love you moon." "I love Pennsylvania."

"I love New York."

Recently, I had to confiscate his beloved GameCube because he refused to adhere to bed time rules. I told him once he regularly stayed in bed all night, he could have it back.

One Monday morning he greeted me early and said, "Can I have my GameCube?"

"No, you didn't stay in bed," I said.

"FINE!"

He stomped back upstairs.

He came down 5 minutes later.

"It's Tuesday morning. I slept all night.

"Can I have my GameCube?"

We have some idea of the things that make him burst into laughter. Frequently they are sight gags. He adores "SpongeBob," and the more visual the story, the more he laughs.

He laughs hardest at a silly Looney Tune in which Daffy Duck does a take on Carmen Miranda, dancing and gyrating around the cartoon room with a fruit basket on his head. Daffy's funny, but nothing's funnier than my son giggling so hard he turns red and nearly falls off his chair.

Unless he is singing. He's head-over-heels with female singers, such as Carrie Underwood, Natasha Bedingfield and Leona Lewis. His iPod is loaded with their hits.

One day recently I went to check on him in his room. I could hear him singing in there, one flat note after another. I think it was Lewis' "Bleeding Love." He seemed to have his iPod and ear buds on; I could hear tinny music.

His door was locked.

I knocked. The singing stopped. He unlocked the door and peeked out through a crack.

"What are you doing?" I said.

"I don't know."

"Ok."

He shut and locked the door. The singing resumed.