His First Words

When my oldest child said his first words, it was pretty darn cool. I mean I called up my mother and told her about it and she was pretty happy. He was about 9 months old. He hasn’t shut up since, and believe me we’ve been trying.

We also have a daughter who it took a bit longer to get her to open up. She was about 14 months before she really started talking. For a while we were a bit worried, but now she is as bad (or good) as her brother.

Then there is our little autistic boy. Waiting for years for him to say “daddy” really was hard. There is an expectation that children will just recognize you at some point. That they will just say who you are and give you a bit of credit for bringing them into the world. When it doesn’t come it is pretty rough to deal with.

All I can say is that when that day did arrive it was one of the happiest in my life. I admit that I did shed a tear or two over it.

Unlike the other two we still struggle each day to get him to say even the simplest of phrases. There is something inside him that just doesn’t see the need to communicate like that. But there is still a look in his eyes and something in his smile that he reserves just for mom and dad. The words may not be there, but all of the love and emotion that a child has for his parents is there, and those are things that make him just too adorable to ignore.

Dealing With “What do You Want”

Perhaps the most frustrating part of dealing with our particular child has been the “what do you want” routine.

Without the ability to communicate in other ways, he has developed a way of communicating which is to grab your hand and take you into a room where the object of his desire is located. Then we get to play a little game where we attempt to figure out which object it is.

For parents who are dealing with a child in similar circumstances I can recommend the following things:

First, make sure that anything you don’t want the kid to have or to harass you about constantly is in a locked cabinet.

Second, put the items that you do want the child to have regular access to in plain view, but just out of reach (so they don’t get into it and make a huge mess). That way the choices will be much more obvious.

Finally, before you give out the object, make the child give a sign or a word (any sound similar to the word is good). This really does encourage speech development.