Relief

Sometimes you only know that things were bad, when you look back at things from a distance.

It was two and a half years ago when we realized that Ian couldn’t talk. When other kids were jabbering up a storm, Ian had mastered ten words.

He also lost his happy baby disposition. He was upset all the time and dealt with his frustration by screaming at the top of his lungs. Sometimes he was upset because we didn’t understand what he wanted. He would point at things and make his own sign language, but the pointing only went so far. We learned American sign language and that helped a bit.

Sometimes he was upset because people were making him do things that he didn’t want to do. He had a speech therapist who strapped him a high chair and tried to force him talk. “Say cat, Ian. Caaat. Say cat.” And he couldn’t. Not yet. He didn’t have the motor control to make his mouth do what it needed to do. So, he screamed and strained in the chair for the whole session and I was told to leave the room.

I had trouble leaving him with other people, because he was so dependent on me. Nobody else understood him. I was worried that they wouldn’t be nice to him after he screamed. He got booted out of a pre-school and a babysitter.

Even during those tough years, Ian was always a fantastic kid. He always gave the most amazing hugs. He played with his trains for hours making up stories about disaster at the end of the line. “oh no,” he would cry and his trains would plummet down the old radiator hole in the kitchen floor down to the basement below. He idolized his older brother.

Ian is slowly learning how to talk. He talks in sentences, if they aren’t too fancy. “I like juice. More milk please. Where’s Thomas? I go potty. Daddy in New York City.” He responds to questions, if they aren’t too fancy. He’ll tell you how old he is and the names of his trains. He’s at age level for academic stuff — He can count. He can read: cat, bat, hat, rat, mat. He knows colors and shapes. He isn’t strong enough to hold his pencil properly, but he’s improving here, too.

The biggest change is that he’s happy. He grew up enormously over the summer. He has enough speech now that he feels like he’s part of the group. He can sort of tell me what he did at school in the morning. Yesterday, I asked him what he did at school and he told me, “I picka da nose.” So, that’s something.

I can’t possibly explain the relief of having a frustrated kid become happy. When he marches around the house with a big smile on his face, it just makes me giggle. When he so laughs so hard at my jokes that he gets the hiccups, I start to cry.

One of the best things I did was to go outside the school system for help. One of my continual frustrations has been the lack of communication with his school system. I gave up on them and hired outside help. Again, relief. Finally, I have someone who answers my questions. This is the first person who tells me what the future holds, instead of offering bland cliches. “Let’s take one day at a time.” or “Only time will tell.” Finally, I have someone who is smart enough to notice that Ian is a really smart, creative kid. And Ian loves her. She has a closet full of Thomas games and he plays with her for an hour once a week.

He’s also loosened his grasp of my legs. He’s got a babysitter on Thursday afternoons, who is experienced with kids like Ian, and he goes to daycare for two afternoons a week. The daycare is over crowded, but it’s fine for Ian. He actually needs time to just kick back with kids his age and mess around without constant drilling and supervision. He’s learning from the other kids. I’ve been holding my breath, afraid to declare victory. But it’s been a month now, and they haven’t kicked him out yet. Maybe this is going to work. This is the first help that I’ve had in almost three years.

Ian is still very far behind his peers. He has another year of pre-school before we’ll have to decide whether or not to hold him back from kindergarten. He’s going to continue to have struggles for many years. But as long as he has a smile on his face, I’m happy beyond words.

(I’ve got some little videos of him talking. I’m trying to figure out how to upload them into typepad.)