I neglected to mention something momentous that happened in October. That’s okay, though, since I neglected it on purpose because it deserves its own post. (Note: I say “I” a lot in this post. “I” mostly means “we,” as Mario has been fully invested in all of this.)
I have a beautiful, loving, kind, and thoughtful son. Joshua changed my life forever long before he was actually born. Many of you know that for a time during pregnancy, our doctors were worried there was something seriously, as in fatally, wrong with him. By the time he was born, those fears had mostly been put to rest, but the whole experience changed the way I thought about a lot of things, my role as a mother being one of them.
He was born happy and healthy, and he developed very normally for a time. Except for nursing. But, although that issue might be quite intimately related to many of his current issues, that is a story for another time. Possibly never, but another time nonetheless.
He said his first words, “Hi, Dada!” at 12 months. The next week he started saying “eye.” And then he stopped learning new words. By 14 months we started teaching him baby sign language because he was so frustrated that he couldn’t communicate his
needs to us verbally. At his 18 month appointment, his doctor recommended we start speech therapy because he hadn’t learned one single new spoken word at a time when his vocabulary should have been exploding. So we did. We continued sign language and started bribing him with fruit snacks, at the suggestion of his speech therapist, to make 
sounds. Any sound at all was cause for celebration. After a few months, we tried to wean him off the signing to encourage his verbal development, but when we stopped teaching him new signs, he started 
making them up on his own. He finally said “mama” about two weeks before his second birthday. It was one of about 6 words he knew, although he could sign about 20. For a few weeks when he was around 2, he stopped talking completely (it was my fault - with his therapist's blessing, I was trying to speak Spanish consistently in the home - but that’s a long and irrelevant story).
He still doesn’t know how to say “I love you.” I’m not sure he knows what it means. This evening I told him that the marbles he was looking for were on the table. He didn’t understand what that meant. If he still doesn’t 
understand the word “table,” is it possible for him to understand a word like “love?” I’d say probably not. Sometimes it’s hard to stop myself from crying when I’m trying to teach my three-year-old words like table. Or cup. Or marker. Or sister. 
I had to wait two years for him to call me mama. For him to call me anything at all, actually. I have no idea how long it will be before he can tell me he loves me. I try to not let that bother me. Most of the time I’m successful.
This is something I think about pretty much every moment of every day. I spend most of my free time trying to think of ways, or doing research to find ways, to help him develop his speech, his verbal understanding (also slightly deficient, although it is difficult to measure in some ways because of his speech delay), his motor skills (somewhat deficient), his social skills (severely hampered by his lack of speech. It’s hard for kids to play with someone who can’t talk to them), and his emotional health. And I spend most of my time with him (as much as we both can handle, anyway) trying to use the things I’ve thought of or read about or his (many) speech therapists have recommended.
And may I just say that all of this is so frustrating because, according to experts, “ infants are
able to acquire most aspects of language without being explicitly taught. Children, within a few years of birth, understand [their native language] without being explicitly taught.” Well, experts, you can kiss my butt. 
Don’t get me wrong, we have plenty of fun. If you’ve read any of my blogs, you know we are big on fun around here. One of the things I worry a lot about is helping him progress without him realizing that we’re working on
something. It’s pretty tricky because he’s incredibly sensitive to my wily ways, but I just have to keep thinking of new ways that we can practice talking and other skills.
I work hard on teaching. Actually, we work hard on teaching. It takes him five minutes to put on his socks in the morning. And it’s not for lack of teaching on my part. We work endlessly on naming things he can’t remember (like table) and making sounds that give him problems (like “p”) and calming down and using words when all he wants to do is slap me in the face (which sometimes happens) because I just don’t understand what he is trying to say.
As frustrating as I find all of this to be, I cannot imagine how frustrating Josh’s entire life must be. He starts to cry when I get out his socks. Every single day. But what can I do but help him once again to try to learn to put them on himself? Even though all I want to do is put them on for him and save him the distress (and many times I do), is that really what he needs? 
He is a very
emotionally fragile little guy, and I’ll be perfectly honest: it irks me to no end that he whines and cries ALL DAY LONG about anything and everything. If he rolls a toy 
car and it doesn’t go exactly where he wants it to go. If his stuffed toy giraffe won’t stand up. If I talk to him when he doesn’t want me to. If Scout touches any of his animals. If I look at him when he doesn’t want me to. Don’t get me started on our potty-training communication (which potty training, by the way, we 
are still working on and it’s been 9 months). But what would I do if no one, not even my own mom who spends every moment of the day with me, understands what I am very plainly trying to say? What would I do if I 
couldn’t make any friends because no one can understand me? What would I do if other kids took advantage of me and were mean to me because I can’t talk? What would I do if my extended family thought I wasn’t worth the time to get to know or spend time with because getting to know me is a little more work? What would I do if I lived in a world I had no control over and felt like was steam-rolling me every single day?
I’ll tell you what I would do. I would whine and cry all day long because that would suck.
One day in Alaska, Josh and I went to the library, as we often did. We were doing puzzles near a mom and her son. The mom was fairly young, and the little boy was two. I know he was two because he told me. We had a conversation, me and that boy, because his mom wasn’t
paying any attention to him and he was lonely. As I was chatting with him, my silent-except-for-grunts-and-whines two-year-old by my side, I started to get mad. I try every single freaking day to lovingly help my son talk, to help him reach his potential. He is the focus of every single day. And this mom who couldn’t care less has a son that I am having a conversation with. Where is the fairness in that? And then I thought, what if my little Josh had been sent to someone who didn’t care? Who didn’t try every single day? Whose entire life wasn’t him? What if, indeed. I don’t want to know what if. And so I work and pray and think and research and we get through it together, me and Mario and my little man. 
This is not to say that Josh is stupid. He can put together a 24-piece puzzle rated for 5-6 year-olds. He has an amazing memory. He has a handful of books memorized that he can recite to me (in his own way) at the drop of a hat. He can tell me how to get home from the store in the car. He has a great sense of humor. He is kind and sensitive and loving and incredibly brave in his own way.
He just can’t tell you about any of it.
But what of this momentous October happening, you say? Well, Josh qualified for a special pre-kindergarten program for
disabled children. My son is classified as disabled because his verbal communication is so far behind. That’s a sobering thought. As if I needed more sobering on the subject of his development. 
Anyway, he started in October. He goes to school five days a week for three hours. There is a 2:1 student:teacher ratio in his class. He has one-on-one speech therapy every week. 
There is someone besides me and Mario who is invested in his progress. And I find it hard to explain how that has changed everything for me. I have felt positively 
suffocated at times by the responsibility of finding some way, any way, for Josh to catch up so he can make friends and interact with his family and have a full and happy life in every way. 
And now it’s not just me. I have a whole team of
teachers and aides and therapists who are actually trained in how to help kids just like Josh. 
And the best part is not that I feel better about his future.
The best part is that it is actually helping. He is still far behind where he should be, but he is steadily closing that gap. 
From time to time I get tiny little glimpses of the Josh that is obscured by his difficulties, the Josh I haven’t actually met yet. Once in a very great while, he will make a simple little joke or answer a question in a way that I didn’t teach him, and it gives me hope that someday I will get to ask him how he is and get a real answer. Someday he’ll come running up to me and 
tell me something he’s excited about. Someday he’ll tell me a story he made up. Someday he’ll tell me what he dreamed about. Someday he’ll tell me what’s going on inside that amazing little brain of his, because I’m just dying to know. 
Heck, maybe even someday he’ll tell me he loves me.
