Coming Along

Jacob’s speech is shifting again, he’s moving ahead, coming along… swimmingly.  The pace is fairly glacial, and so like the encroaching ice it moves so slowly you don’t notice it has crossed the line, carried on to elsewhere until, suddenly seeming, it is there!

Jake used to ask everyone questions that he already knew the answers to: "Is that a baby?" while staring at a baby. Contrary to the standard “book” on autistic people, Jake actually found it easier to ask a (straightforward, factual) question than to make a declarative statement.

Well, that seems to be shifting now, and Jake is just declaring away to any and all around him. Thankfully most of the people he talks to are willing to play along, not delve too deep into why a big kid is sounding so much like a little kid.

There is no meanness. Yet. But, then again, he hasn't tried talking to too many teenagers. Yet.

Jake to a man walking a dog the other day on the street: “Excuse me, Man? You’re walking your dog!” Luckily the man smiled quizzically then kindly, and agreed that yes indeed, he WAS walking his dog.

When we took a train ride recently, on the return trip home the train was very crowded and it took a long time for the conductor to make her way through the car. Jake was leaning out into the aisle watching her, clearly impatient to talk to her.

He started to shout out to her, but I made him wait until she was close. When she was two rows away from us, he just couldn't contain himself any longer...

Jacob: "Mrs. Conductor!"

Conductor: "Yes?"

(I couldn't wait to hear what in the world he was dying to say to her; really had no clue.)

Jacob: "I have a ticket!"

Conductor: "And I'm going to come punch the heck out of your ticket in just one moment. Wait and I'll be right there."

When she comes to take his ticket, Jake is beaming, then makes a request: "Make a happy face, please." (The conductor on the outgoing train had done that, pleasing Jake no end.)

Conductor: "Okay..."

And then? Jake kicks it up a notch: "With teeth, a happy face with pointy teeth!" (I'm thinking: no more vampire movies for you, my son.)

The conductor, bless her soul, is game: "Well, I'll try..."

And she did. And Jake was pleased. It doesn't look much like a vampire happy face, but she get's an A for effort and kindness, for sure.

The other day I was listening to Jacob tell me something when it hit me like a ton of bricks: He was using complete sentences without prompting.

A year ago, while he was certainly capable of using complete sentences, we mostly got single words and short phrases (if it wasn't a completely scripted phrase) unless we pushed for more. And so we had to push, push, push him. And deny him, pretend to not understand. If he could get what he wanted with two or three words, that's all we'd get.

Instead of "I want to want to wear the red shirt today, Mom, can I have it please?" (now) he would say "Red one." We had to pull expansiveness out of him, and it was exhausting.

So when did that change? I couldn't tell you. When did this full-sentence-talking-boy emerge? Dunno.

That night I asked my husband: "Have you noticed Jake almost always talks in full sentences these days?" And he had to stop and think about it, and then agreed with me that yes, he does, and no, he too has no idea exactly when that shifted.

And that's the maddening thing. There is no exactly. It's minutely incremental, like how sand dunes "walk" across a desert, a few inches a day. And you never notice the day-to-day movement until suddenly it's clear the landscape has altered irrevocably.

That's Jake.

He is also asserting himself in new and interesting ways...

When Ethan grabs the TV clicker as he sits down in the living room where Jake is in the middle of watching a show, Jake will now pipe up with: "Ethan, don't change the channel... I'm watching something!" 

When I spoke to him the other day and addressed him, as I often do, as "sweetheart" I got this response:  “Don’t call me sweetheart. My name is Jacob.” (This is probably an adaptation of a script from a TV show, book or movie that I just don't recognize, but it's so damn appropriate that I'm going to count it as amazing anyway.)

I don't know where all this is going, but I know it's a long way from where we've been. And for this next year,  I'm vowing to pay more attention on the way,

But I'll probably still be taken by surprise by Jake's changes. He's a sneaky one, that boy, growing and growing up, changing and evolving while I'm distracted and focused elsewhere for a moment.

I look at him and he's standing in place, admiring the flowers. I turn around and there he is, a whole square further down the path, smiling and waving.

And as long as he's forging ahead, I wouldn't have it any other way. Keep going Jake, keep going... leave me in the dust, please.

I'm also linking this post up to Shell's Pour Your Heart Out linky at Things I Can't Say



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I Get Around

I am guest posting over at Mommypants today!

What?  You thought I meant that in a different vein?  Well, I *did* once, but not anymore.  I'm a proper married lady now, remember.  Ahem.

So come visit my friend Cheryl's terrific blog, and read all about how I wear my Mommypants.

Especially the upgrades I needed as my son's special needs were emerging, and no one was listening to me...

Cheryl was one of my early blogging connections.  She wrote for the (now sadly defunct) SV Moms Group Orange County Moms blog, a sister site to the NYC Moms Blog I wrote for.  I was noodling around their other sites, discovered Cheryl there, followed her back to her home blog and was hooked. 

Cheryl is a wonderful writer and a great mom, with three astonishingly beautiful children.  She was a pioneer, a sportswriter in a time when women were still a novelty in the locker room.

She also a truly generous blogger, creating connections and community both at Mommypants and at The Red Dress Club.

Cheryl is one of the founders of, and a driving force behind the wonderful Red Dress Club site.

This is a support site for writers, a virtual writer's society.  They have recently begun a specifically memoir writing prompt, and I was very pleased with the post my participation in this inspired.

So now go, read me at Mommypants today, and then stay for a while and savor Cheryl, explore some other mommypants moments guest posts.

I am honored to be in such prestigious company, proudly wearing my Mommypants along with the amazing guest bloggers who have come before me.

And if you are new to The Squashed Bologna, come over from Cheryl?  Welcome!

I love to meet new people, make new friends.  Sit down, stay awhile, I have some stories to tell...




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O is for Oxygen

O is for Oxygen

Because?

Oh, why the hell not?

It is the most abundant element in our world's crust, makes up about 20% of the earth's atmosphere, is the useful part of the air we breathe, suffusing our very cells, the source of their energy.

But do we ever think much about it?  No, it's just there, all around us. Unless of course, it's not. And then, well, we're in trouble, unless that gets fixed, and fast.

Kind of like language. Being human, we use it all the time, every day.  We think in it, but don't think about it much.  Unless, of course, it's not working; not developing right from the start or slipping away, disappearing, suddenly due to trauma or slowly at the end of life. 

And then?  There is trouble.

I was an early talker, precocious, creating my first poem at two: "Mom, it's the moon in the afternoon!"  And my kids?  I expected them to be just like me.  Silly how first time parents are about that stuff, no?

When the boys weren't talking at a year I was frustrated, but everyone told me to chill my jets, that my expectations were unrealistic.  I was reminded that they were boys, they were twins, both reasons they would be a little later in their talking.

At fifteen months, I knew something was wrong, but once again, everyone pretty much patted me on the head and told me not to worry, all still well within the norm.

This was just a scant few years ago, before autism and speech delay were firmly embedded in the national psyche.  Before every pediatrician had a five point checklist of developmental milestones to go over at check-ups with big red flags for autism clearly spelled out.  When they were still things being whispered about in the dark corners of mommy and me classes.

When I asked for a referral to Early Intervention at a year, I was scorned; when I asked at fifteen months, I was dismissed again.  At eighteen months with neither Ethan nor Jake able to claim a stitch of functional language to their names, I finally got the go ahead to pull the parachute cord, stop my sons' developmental free-fall.

And the funny thing?  In spite of both having no language?  It was for completely different reasons.

Jacob had no language, but he did have occasional words,  You would say a word to him and he would repeat it, clear as a bell, right back to you, but then it would disappear, never to be heard again.  There were all the mechanics of speech in place but no communicative intent. And without that?  Speech does not become language.

Ethan, on the other hand, had a ton of communicative intent, but was having trouble with the mechanics of speech, wrapping his mouth around the words.  And boy, was he frustrated.  His tantrums at a year and a half, engendered by the frustration of being unable to let his thoughts be known?  Awe inspiring.  And heartbreaking.

We taught him a few signs and he worked them furiously, useful ones like "more" and "enough."  He took to the speech therapy offered by Early Intervention like a duck to water, slowly learned how to talk to us.

By two Ethan had a few words, but they were not easy to understand.  He had initial consonants only, and then it was all vowel soup.  I had to translate, was the only one who knew that “coh-ee” was a crayon, while “coo-ee” was a cookie. 

And then?  At two and a half, nearly on the dot, he had a language explosion and we never looked back.  Ethan is now a "high verbal" kid; a conversationalist with a huge, sometimes surprising vocabulary.

Jacob, on the other hand, was clearly another story.  It was slow going. We figured out there was a lot more than speech delay going on there.  Eventually he got a diagnosis, and the therapies he needed, including ABA, to begin his march up the language ladder.  It was a struggle.  I had to put on my autism-mom-cast-iron-underwear, my mommypants, and scrap, scrape and fight to get all of his necessary services and therapy hours.

There is too much story here to tell in this one post, but this small part I will...

Most people don't realize that speech and language are not the same thing, that words can be used to label and to communicate, and that one will not necessarily evolve into the other, unless a vital connection is made. That spark that is communicative intent.

At nearly two and a half Jacob had words, could label like a champ.  Show him a cup, he said "cup," turn on the faucet and he quickly came up with "water."  But when thirsty?  Jacob would just cry and cry.

Because the switch had not yet been thrown in his brain; the one that let him know that these fun labeling things, these words?  They had a purpose; could be used to communicate his thoughts, his needs, and most importantly, to get those needs met.

And then, the switch got tripped.

The day Jacob made his first request, I think it was "Up?" when he wanted to be picked up, was one of the happiest days of my life.

I think I had been holding my breath, at that point, for nearly two years.  And finally, that day, I was able to exhale, inhale again.  Bring some fresh oxygen, that stuff of life, into my brain; know that Jake would, could, eventually, enter the world of language, and be alright.

This post has been inspired by and linked up to Jenny Matlock's Alphabe-Thursday writing meme. And isn't "O" such a lovely round letter this week?

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