My Quirky Kid-Update

Will has good days and bad days. A bad day would be like last Sunday when by the time we made it to church, all four of us were either screaming or crying. Or, like Wednesday night last week when at 9:30 pm and the kids were finally all asleep, Cortney and I realized we had failed to eat dinner and not wanting to eat fried eggs again (we’ve been averaging that meal about twice a week for the last six weeks), we put in an order for Thai food and ate dinner at 10 o’clock at night. We looked (and felt) like we had just lost a 10 round boxing match.

Although I’d love to blame the “bad” days on APD, I’m sure a majority of the time Will is just being a normal active three year-old boy, but I tell myself he’ll calm down after he starts therapy because it makes me feel better. Releases some of the control into the unknown, and gives me hope that I will feel like we have everything under way in the near future. He’s been so incredibly defiant lately. I just feel like I can’t get him to do anything, and instead he just does the opposite.

I’ve had a lot of medical professionals lately ask me how Will’s speech delay effects him. Does he have a hard time making friends? Is he social, at all? Is he shy because of his speech delay? Does he understand that he can’t speak well? Does he play well with others?

As I have spent time contemplating these questions, I can’t help but feel an incredibly sense of irony in this whole thing. Will can hardly talk, yet is the most social kid I’ve ever known. His speech delay in no way inhibits him from making friends. Will makes friends SO easily, and he’s so proactive about it. I always tell Will that’s he’s going to be the most amazing missionary because he already loves everyone he meets and wants to be their friend. Within the first day of school (at the 2nd preschool) every student knew his name and when he left, he waved goodbye like he owned the place, to which all the kids responded “Bye Will! See you tomorrow! Let’s play again! Have a good day!” and all kinds of other well wishes. He is the big man on campus wherever he goes.

A few months ago, every kid could mostly understand what Will was saying (way more than I could understand, anyway) and I loved the “kid language” that seemed to exist where all kids four and under could understand what every other toddler was saying. But now, I’m starting to see other kids look really confused when Will talks. And I cant help but wonder how long it will be before Will’s speech delay affects the kinds of relationships he can make.

Possibly the worst byproduct of this scenario is Will retreating from his smiling outgoing personality to that of a shy, low confidence kid who is sad and frustrated because he can’t talk like other kids.

And truthfully, that is my biggest fear in all of this.

Will has this incredible ability to connect with any person, any age, and any station in life. A person is a person, as far as he’s concerned. With no fear, he talks to everyone, greets them kindly and honestly, in his mind, I think he sees the whole world as a sea of friends and potential friends.

But I also have faith that we are catching this early enough that within a few years, I really don’t think he’ll have much of a lag at all.

As frustrating as he (and this whole situation can be), I’m constantly in awe of my kids. Will has been so incredibly adaptable thus far in his life, that it took a monumental move to shake things up enough for us to even be tipped off that something wasn’t right. And to think that he has spent his whole life not understanding half of what we were saying, but he was still an incredibly “normal” kid, truly speaks of his intelligence. He is a really smart kid and has no doubt had to learn how to think on his feet quickly. Maybe this is why Will is so talented with his hand-eye coordination—when his ears and mind couldn’t understand something, he used his hands to figure it out. But possibly the best explanation is that Heavenly Father gives us strengths to help us where we are weak.

This week is a big one. Will has a hearing test on Wednesday (through the school district), and a private speech evaluation with Miss Kathryn on Friday. I’ve decided not to give Will Coke for breakfast on Wednesday, because I’m positive Will does not have a hearing problem and I want them to have every reason to agree with that. After this we won’t have anything until the speech assessment with the school district on the 27th of February.

The last two weeks seem to have been so busy, I hardly have enough time to do anything (explanation for fried eggs for dinner twice a week). One day I was getting really frustrated with myself as to why I could not keep my house clean, or even just get the laundry done. It seemed like no matter what I did, there was just no way on earth I could ever get the clothes folded and put away without laying in huge piles in the family room for a week. In my mind I ran through each day and tried to look at times that maybe I was being lazy and could have folded laundry, only to find that there was no wasted time. Just no time. I feel like all day I’m in the car taking Will from point A to point B, or at home trying to direct him from activity A to activity B.

We’re making more friends little by little and that is wonderful. Alia invited us to a play date with some old friends of hers, and the moment I walked in the door I thought, “these are my kind of ladies!” I’m really excited to get to know them better. And yesterday in church, I sat on the couch in the foyer and talked to a woman during all of Sunday School and Relief Society and it felt so good to talk someone for long enough that I knew I would remember their name when I saw them again:)

I just read over this post and it sounds so Debbie Downer. I promise, I’m not as depressed as I sound! Cortney and I both feel good about being here and things are really looking up! My aunt sent me a fridge magnet that says, “The future is a bright as your faith” and I think about that all the time. I hope my faith matches the magnitude of the bright future I have in my mind for Will.

I was texting my friend, Christy (speech therapist), the other day and Christy happens to come from probably the best family I know- the Frosts. The Frost family is one of those rare families that “gets it”. They are so genuine and funny and they do the right things for the right reasons. Some of the best parenting advice we have ever received has come from the Pam Frost, matriarch of the family. Christy’s brother, Jacob, lost most of his hearing due to meningitis as a toddler and for the rest of his upbringing, Pam (mom) sat at the table with Jacob, and taught him how to talk in spite of his hearing handicap.

I was expressing my frustration with Christy about our initial assessment with the school district and my desire for Will to be accepted to a Special Ed preschool, but fearing that he wasn’t “handicapped” enough to be let in. She joked that I should call Pam and have her bully the school district into letting Will in. Pam is about the nicest person on the planet, but when it comes to her kids, I could see her making herself known, in every possible way. I laughed and said that in her heyday with Jacob, I’m sure Pam was a force to be reckoned with. Christy said, “Oh, she was a legend.”

So my mantra for being Will’s advocate has become: Be a legend. It makes me smile and laugh and feel feisty all at the same time, just thinking about it.

We also made the decision to pull Will out of his current preschool. He was able to get into a preschool that was much closer to home, it was the same price as his last preschool, and they seem to be much more equipped to help Will. His current preschool teacher is very sweet, but has such a strong accent, I can barely understand her, so I don’t think Will would have any chance of progressing in speech there. Let’s hope another major change won’t completely derail this kid.

Gratitudes to: Emily for taking the time to research APD and then buying a book about it and shipping it to me. Alia for always being so happy to watch Duke during all of Will’s appointments and being so excited for Liam to have someone to play with. Casey for watching Duke on Friday during Will’s speech assessment, and letting me crash at your house while Will is at school. Harrison James for being my resident babysitter across the street and always coming over with a smile on your face when I need to run an errand and the kids are asleep. Sue for getting the boys new Adidas shoes—baby Superstars are so cute I am giddy when I look at them.