When will my Child be Normal?

R and I have been sick for past few weeks, and just started to recover.  After our visit to ChildFind (who gave us the go ahead to homeschool for 2 years, YAY!), he got a cold, which I also caught.  We recovered in time, or so we thought, for our family vacation to Japan, which was awesome.  But coming home, R went down with bad ear pain, and got otitis media (middle ear infection).

He was put on antibiotics, but the sleepless nights of caring for him got to me and I succumbed.  I'm on the mend now, still not 100% but getting there.

I did do a lot of thinking time while I was recovering, and encountered a couple of posts that were comforting.

One of the biggest questions my husband and I ask ourselves and of God is "When will R be normal?"  By normal we mean, when will he speak and develop and act like other children his age?

In all honesty, this has been weighing heavily on my heart.  I want nothing more than for R to grow up and be a productive member of society, to be a man who loves Jesus with all his heart and strength and mind, fall in love and marry a God-fearing, wonderful woman someday, and finally, to have his own little family to love and nurture.

The fact that he's still not speaking is quite a discouragement, despite the fact that he's 4 years old already.  It's something that has grieved me since we got the diagnosis, and wondering if he will ever come out of it.

Then I read this post and just thought, I should just accept R as he is and not compare him to others.  It's a reminder, because it's not a new idea to me.  It is something I easily forget though, and I thank God for timely reminders like these.

“Normal is a setting on a dishwasher. Nothing about kids is normal, and we wouldn’t want it to be. [He] will be [R] and that will be OK. It might not always be the easiest, but it will be [him].”

I changed that to my son's name... and it's ok.  He is who he is.  It might not always be the easiest, but it will be him.

Who defined normal anyway?  What matters is that R is who he is.  No more, and no less.

For now, this post has been giving me some hope that R will start speaking soon.  He may no longer be a toddler, but the language is emerging.  He can already call me "Ma", and "Da" for my husband when prompted.  That's a long way from this time last year, where he couldn't say anything at all.

So to check on his progress, I looked at the list compiled by this aforementioned post, and looked at R.

Able to communicate wants and needs. Before expressive language blasts off, your child should have a good grasp of using different forms of communication (both verbal AND non-verbal) to send messages to other people. This includes pointing, gesturing, sign language, facial expressions, eye gaze (looking at you, then looking at what he wants), non-word sounds and noises. **The ability to use pointing, gestures, and gaze to communicate has been directly linked by research to expressive language development!

Okay, R is good here.  He finds ways to communicate to us what he wants or needs.  This is what the SLP and OT call "intent to communicate", and because he does so, they say this will greatly work to his advantage.

Communicates to show and share experiences. The ability to use communication for social purposes is JUST as important as communicating to get needs met. Your child should be using different forms of communication to draw your attention to objects and actions that excite him! For example, he may see a firetruck down the street, point to it to show you (possibly pairing with a gesture or word), and then look at you to see if you are looking, too. Another example of this is sharing enjoyment- if you are reading a book together and come to a funny part in the story, your child might laugh and then look at you to see if you are laughing, too. **It is also important that your child is able to FOLLOW your point with his gaze- if you were the one pointing at the firetruck, your child should be able to identify what you are looking at based on your pointing alone.

R does this a lot, especially on car rides, when he sees things he likes (i.e. trains, planes, flags and so on).  So that's another check.

Receptive language is on track. Receptive language, or language comprehension, is how much language your child understands. Receptive language develops before expressive language and is a bit more predictable, although it can be hard to assess in the early years. If your child is able to identify familiar objects, follow simple commands, respond to his/her name, and understand some action words, he’s on the right track. Other receptive skills that are developing in this age range include identifying clothing and body parts and sorting objects by category (i.e. putting blocks with other blocks, animals with other animals, and balls with other balls).

Check again on this one.  No problems here.  He understand what we ask of him and knows  how to follow simple commands

Initiates turn-taking games and routines with adults. Does your child enjoy turn-taking games like “Peek-a-boo” or rolling a ball back and forth? Does she like to take turns “beeping” noses or sharing a snack with you? The ability to participate and initiate these types of routines signals that she is ready for the back-and-forth nature of a conversation.

Again another check.  He's doing very well here and enjoys playing these games, especially with his dad.  Sometimes we have to prompt him with turn-taking but he's mostly pretty good here.

Symbolic Play. The relationship between play and language development is incredibly fascinating. Children progress through different stages of play throughout early childhood that mirror their cognitive development. The appearance of symbolic play, which is when a child uses a toy or an object to represent another object (for example, zooming a block around like a car or “feeding” a baby doll), signals that he is cognitively ready for language because he is able to use symbols- after all, words are really just arbitrary symbols for actions, objects, and ideas!

Ahh, this is where we mark with an X for now.  His concept of pretend play is still emerging, and we're hoping it will come in soon.  And with that, we look forward to chatting with our little guy, when he unfolds in God's time, and in God's way.

For now, we just need to be patient.