the explosion

Our son is talking our ears off and we couldn't be more thrilled.

We think Riley's speech explosion has finally begun. In the past month, he has gone from saying 2 word combos to 3 or more word sentences. Yesterday, his preschool teacher told me that he imitated the other kids by asking, "May I have more milk please?". Normally, he'd say "more milk please", when prompted. Unprompted he would just say "milk". He said it for me again later -- it's slow, but understandable and I am so proud of my boy for having the courage to try it.

Some of the phrases he's been saying the past week are:

"Clean up the mess"
"Shut the door"
"Hello Doctor Soul" -- said to his neurologist, who was quite impressed with his speech progress since his last visit in January.
"Daddy, wake up!"
"Five A/Cs, window"

Now that he's learning the phrase "May I have", we're beginning to add other common phrases at the beginning and endings of his current sentences as well as verbs, articles & prepositions to help fill them out. "Five A/Cs in window" becomes "We have five A/Cs in the windows". It helps to break it up into three parts so that he says all the words. "Sit!" becomes "Will you sit with me?". I'm using this last one as a springboard to inviting a child to play with him, since he doesn't know how to do this appropriately yet. He usually does something to get their attention that they don't appreciate (knock over their toy or smacking them on the arm). Empathy has yet to be learned!

All this leaves us feeling very encouraged about Riley's anticipated ability to converse at the level of his peers. As we mentioned in our previous blog, the larger concern is in the area of socialization. We're hoping that his preschool time and developing speech skills will aid him in maturing in this area. He's such a friendly & outgoing child that we're hoping that the instruction he receives and positive role models will be all that he needs.

I recall last year that some folks in an effort to encourage us would tell us that having a talkative child can be exhausting. In other words, count your blessings if you have a quieter child. What they don't realize is that when you're faced with the possibility that your child may not be able to communicate and might be ostracized at school, it changes your perspective. We want our son to know the blessing of real friendship and being able to converse is so important to that. So while interacting with a talkative child IS emotionally exhausting, it's such a gift to be able to know what's going on in their mind. We have longed to know more of Riley's thoughts and hear how he's processing things in his world. To hear him talking all day long (even if he repeats the same thought) is such a joy to us. We'll take that emotional tiredness for the silence that we've had for the past two years, any day.

So bring on the speech explosion, we're ready for it!

Shelby