My boy has become quite the conversationalist in recent weeks, which has completely thrilled his team of teachers and therapists. His dad and I are pretty excited about it, too. The boy has been communicating for awhile now, going on a couple of years, really – but it’s only been recently that he’s begun communicating in full sentences, and carrying on actual conversations with people. It tickles me to see him engaging in a back-and-forth dialogue with people. It’s become routine now for him to greet his teachers, saying good morning and greeting them by name. He told a classmate the other day, “Nice haircut!” And during one difficult morning last week, he he yelled at his teacher to go pee in her pants. He had to write her a note of apology. I apologized as well, and then immediately called my sister and we laughed until we cried. Now, we’re invoking this phrase whenever things aren’t going our way. We’ve had blizzard weather here in Denver this week, and I literally snorted when I read, “Go pee in your pants, snow!!” on my sister’s Facebook page.

Last night at the dinner table, we were trying to get the little girls to eat their peas. The Man pointed out to them that even their brother ate his peas, and he doesn’t like anything. I protested, listing all the things that he does like to eat. I mentioned Spanish rice, since he had polished off an entire plateful of it, and then asked The Boy what else he liked to eat, not even expecting him to respond. But he totally did! He said he liked rice. Then he mentioned pizza, chicken nuggets, tomatoes (lie – he hates them!), eggs, yogurt, donuts, cereal, rice (he mentioned it twice!), pumpkin seeds, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I couldn’t get the grin off my face – it’s so unlike him to participate in a conversation like that, and it was so sweet to see him thinking up new things to add. Such a special moment!

I always think back to our very first speech therapist, who took me aside one day and very gently told me she didn’t know if my son would ever learn to speak, and that our family really needed to learn sign language so we could communicate with him throughout his life. I think she meant well. I really do. I always try to remind myself that people mean well, and people say stupid things when they mean to say insightful and helpful things. Unfortunately, this was neither of those. Hearing that my son may never speak at all was like a punch in the gut, and it was more traumatizing for me personally than hearing the news that my son had autism. It seems so insignificant, in some ways. After all, he’s HERE, and he’s healthy. But one of the best parts of having kids is hearing them talk, y’know?

I had a dream around that time that my son had fallen off the bank of a creek into some water where we were fishing. In my dream, he went under water and I panicked and pulled him out, and he cried and told me plain as day, “I didn’t like that, Mommy!” At that point, I had never heard him say any words at all, and wondered if I ever would. That dream felt like a gift from God, granting me that premonition and reassurance that things would eventually work out. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could always listen to that inner voice?