Three little words.
They mean so many things to so many people.
Our oldest turns 3 in a week and a half.
This week he said I love you.
It's the second time he's said it to me.
It's funny the things that go through your mind when your child receives a diagnosis. What will this mean? How do I help my child? If your nerdy like me - Where's the nearest literature? The questions keep coming as you navigate raising your child in a world that has charts, averages, and progression lines and your child's taken the box and is spinning in the kitchen with it on his head.
After awhile things start to even out. You learn terms like OT, PT, Speech path. You start your own experiential master class in sensory needs, therapy techniques, and how to feed a child who's brain literally makes most common food textures public enemy number 1.
You even start learning to ignore the stares and glares when your child melts down because the lights and to bright and the noise echoing hurts in the stores but you go because life goes on.
You find the joys as the grow, like any child, like every child, just on their own pace.
In our house:
We've cuddled over trains, laughed over tickles, and blown bubbles til our cheeks hurt.
We've painted pictures to give away because even in his own world he likes to share smiles and boy do his grandparents smile when they get a picture. We've bakes cupcakes because he loves to pour and sprinkle sprinkles. We snuggle every day and get lost in books because that's who our little guy is and so much more.
But there are still challenges and even though the big ones remain in varying forms, we're far enough in that new variations have come to light.
Like speaking.
Autism and speech delay seem to go hand in hand. A terrible twosome that helps keep kiddo's in their own world. Those first words come with such work and for some never come.
We took our techniques and lessons, our speech path and OT's, our self regulation and started small: bubbles, Dada, Mama.
Slowly jabbering came and turned into words.
We've moved to jabbering and small sentences. He just learned No :) For us each emphatic "No" is a slightly exasperating victory. We also have entered the realm of echolalia, a world that makes me wish all those autism books I uncovered months ago had a chapter on cryptography.
It's two steps forward and 1 step back (with a few spins, flips, and a little breakdance thrown in for good measure).
This week we snuggled and like every other day I told him I loved him and in his little voice he parroted right back.
Somedays you make your victories out of the scraps, others they're given to you on a silver platter if you have your eyes open to see them.
