non verbal at six, and it's okay

lukes_dad · Hummingbird Joined: Jul 24, 2009 Posts: 21

Haven't posted here in a while, but this place helped me immensely when I was first 'starting out' after my son after diagnosis, so maybe this will resound with another struggling parent.

Luke is almost six years old, still mainly non-verbal, but has made some great strides since his diagnosis. He makes approximations when asking for things, such as the first sound of the word. Sometimes, the entire word will come out clear as day, but these are few and far between, although you can see the pride in his face when he gets it out. He has some sign language, a few signs that he favors, he uses regularly.

He is finally potty trained, which is an awesome milestone, and we are now working on getting him to put his pants back on afterward, instead of running out of the bathroom half naked.

His social skills are much better, and has a couple of friends on the block, a little younger than him who regularly come over and play. (They are noticing his differences, but accepting them. One of his friends wants to learn sign language so she can communicate with him:)

Everything he learns takes tons of patience and repetition, and milestones are very hard to come by, and hard to see on a day to day basis.

This almost tore our family apart, but we somehow held on and are stronger than ever. Most problems were due to me being pig-headed about our family and home being a certain way, and depression on my wife's end. Things are nowhere near perfect, and we're good with that!

We are pretty happy now, and most of all, Luke is a happy well-adjusted kid who is very energetic, curious and 'full of life'.

Last night, the three of us had dinner at Outback, I had a beer, my wife a glass of wine, Luke sat patiently waiting for his food watching an old baby einstein movie on my wife's phone. He had a salad and a loaded baked potato for dinner, and even sat still afterward till we got the check!

I read a post similar to mine on this forum over three years ago, and it gave me hope, so if I can do the same for someone else, it would really make my day!