In Which I Become Melodramatic and Post Against My Better Judgement

Today I have been a little overly emotional about Everett's verbal development. I tracked down some contact information for the developmental programs here, and I am going to get going on that first thing tomorrow. In the mean time, I have been doing a lot of research on various disorders. The therapists mentioned Apraxia in their notes to the state but somehow neglected to inform me about it until I called later to ask my rep if a particular term had been used to describe his condition. Apraxia is somewhat of a big deal as far as his development goes. With the right treatment and intervention, he could be speaking normally in a few years. However, it would be a very difficult process, and this disorder can affect lots of other things developmentally.

As someone who has worked with literacy in young children, and because I didn't have any yet, I had always imagined "making" my children be beyond age level in those areas. I have just had to take some time to re-wire my expectations. I know things will work out. I know this, and it comforts me. However, I know that in order for things to work out, I am going to have to do a lot of things I do not understand yet. As of right now, I have millions of questions and it is all a bit overwhelming. Later, It will not be so overwhelming.

What I have really been meaning to say is that since we moved here, Everett's delay has been much more obvious to me. I have been able to interact daily with many children Everett's age. Take this playground conversation:

Child Everett's age: "Mama, I pay on da swide?"

Everett: "Ma-a-a-a-am. ayaam (more similar, unintelligible sounds) iyhs (word for slide, while patting his chest to indicate that he wants to do something).

I recently had a jolting experience at the grocery store. I heard a sweet child calling out for his mother, "Ma-a-hm! Maaaaaaam!" I couldn't help but smile to myself, because his call sounded like an exact copy of the one I hear from Everett 73 times a day. I rounded the corner, picturing a child like Everett helping his mom shop.

Instead, I found a baby who couldn't have been much older than Ashley, sitting in his cart and crying because he had dropped his bottle. My shoulders sagged a little under my surprise and I went on my way. My days are filled with a thousand of these moments but I have not yet become calloused.

I have overheard children his age singing. I have talked to them about birthdays, presents, favorite foods, and lots of other things. I am tremendously happy that these children are able to interact with me this way, but each time I talk to them, my heart aches for my own son and the reality of his atypical delay. There is little I wouldn't give to be able to kneel down with Everett and help him say a prayer rather than asking him to repeat after me, knowing full well that he is not able to complete a repetition of a single simple word, let a lone an entire prayer. But I ask him anyway. Each time, he will smile shyly and sweetly at me, motioning that he wants me to do it, and I almost feel like crying.

I would love to be able to teach him the words to songs. I would love to have real conversations with him. I want so badly to hear the questions I know he has. I want to know what he understands and hear what he thinks. I would love to be able to go into his room at night after he has awakened and immediately understand what he needs. As it is now, he tries to tell me and we both become increasingly frustrated when I can't begin to figure it out. More often than not, our conversation ends with me losing my patience and snapping at him. Fortunately he is more patient with me than I am with myself.

Things can get tricky in our mono-syllabic world where "help" and "papa" sound the same, "elephant" is nonsensical, and few words are expressed to me with the correct consonants or vowel sounds. Each morning I resolve to be less frustrated and more patient with Everett's abilities that day. My child speaks to me in a babbling language I can't understand, and often I become trapped in a maze of confusion and desperation. Each night I go to bed, realizing I came no closer to meeting my goal than the day before, and I bury my guilt somewhere I won't have to think of it.

Then, just when I begin to fully give in to self-pity and grief, I see how happy Everett is. I feel grateful that he is at an age where it doesn't matter to him if he can talk or not; he lives life just the same. I never get tired of seeing him get so excited for dinner that he pulls his father's face close to his with an excited "Oh! OH!"--the sign in our house that dinner is on the table because he can't verbalize the word "dinner", "eat" or "food". But the way he says it, you'd think the circus just landed in our living room.

Other times, my sensibilities are opened to the scope of Everett's understanding. These are precious moments to me because it is rare that he is able to communicate even a small portion of what he knows. This morning after I told him we were baking a cake, I went into the kitchen to find that he had laid all of the correct ingredients neatly on the counter for me. He remembered our last trip to the grocery store when I explained that the sour cream and strawberries were to go in the cake, and that we needed to pick up some more butter and cream cheese for the frosting. He also remembered to get three eggs. A measuring cup. A big spoon. When I came over to help he asked me about the flour and the sugar, which were sitting in a cabinet beyond his reach.

"ookkkk!" (cook) He said to me excitedly, standing on his special stool, and wearing his special smile--the one with that pinpoint of a dimple in his right cheek. The pleasure bubbled inside me as I got to work with this child of mine. Cooking is one of our only mediums which does not require Everett to correctly pronounce words. It is so tactile that he can communicate strictly by touch and pointing. He is my sweet little sous-chef.

And I? I am trying on a few new hats. Sign language teacher. Speech therapist. Phoneme coach. But most importantly, child advocate. It is a weighty and worrying responsibility, but perhaps one that comes the most naturally.

I am not positive about Everett's diagnosis; he matches every warning sign in the books, but there is surprisingly little people know about Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS). We'll be able to clarify this in the next few months. Though I am unintentionally taking a couple of days to feel the weight of the issue, I am grateful his problems are not worse. There are so many things that would be more difficult to deal with than a speech disorder. I feel blessed to have a connection with my child, that he is happy, and that he enjoys life. Above all, I want my children to grow up as kind people whether their speech is articulate or not. This I know he will do, and that makes me happy.