Hooray for Thomas!

I’m not the world’s biggest Thomas the Tank Engine fan. Too many things to buy. Too many accessories and pieces. Differently sized trains wouldn’t run on all the pieces of track. When Alex and Ned were younger we had some cute Thomas toys (the take-along roundhouse was a big hit with everyone, including me because it stored all its own pieces) but he didn’t seem to have real legs in our house. We put the track and engines away a couple of years ago, and there wasn’t a peep of protest.

Apparently, though, a lot of children with autism really like Thomas in part because the facial expressions are so easy to read.  (Here’s a gallery of the many faces of Thomas.)

Now an Australian profit has partnered with the smiley-faced engine to create a game whose mission is to help children on the spectrum recognize different facial expressions. The game is available to play on their website free of charge. We’ll see how Alex does and report back. I’m guessing he will be able to distinguish some emotions and perhaps not know what others mean.

Suddenly I find myself liking Thomas and that big, toy-dollar-grabbing company a whole lot more.