Okay, interesting, I was shitting on Ass because I thought there was a way to control Alexa through the app or the device touchscreen, rather than through voice activation. Your son is obviously much more capable at navigating the AAC, and you know the software a lot better than I do...now I'm curious, is there a way to navigate outside of the AAC to use the apps for other devices (like Alexa or smart TVs), or was I totally off base with that?
The other stuff I wrote about Ass being an Ass remains accurate.
I saw a feral cat we were feeding get hit by a car (she was fine; we adopted her into the house and she lived nine happy years; she's the tripod I made my house more ~assessible~ for if you remember my post ages ago talking about that)...literally the only thing that stopped me from running into traffic to try and grab her was that I had my dog with me and I didn't want to put him in harm's away. Priscilla is absolutely devoid of empathy.
As is the case with most kids with autism, I don't think Abbie often responds to or even attends to people's emotions...but it does seem like she can sense the general atmosphere of a situation, and I think she got that something was wrong in that situation. Additionally, when Priscilla screams and moves suddenly and makes a big fuss around Abbie, it's almost always followed by Abbie having to do something unpleasant...so I'm sure it gave her a feeling that something bad was about to happen. The situation did seem to upset her quite a bit. There's a definite difference between the way Abbie behaves when she's upset as part of a tantrum, and the way Abbie behaves when she's upset because she's genuinely scared or sad...the latter always breaks my heart a little bit, there's a true helplessness to it, and the snake situation was one of those moments.