A Purge and Look Who's (not) Talking

My son, my dear sweet, cherishable son is twenty months old and refusing to utter one coherent syllable. On a recent visit to the doctors office, I raised my concerns regarding his speech or lack there of and to cut the long story short he is being evaluated to see if he's eligible to receive services for an early interventions program. We've already had one home visit to go over paperwork and will be getting a couple more visits to track and assess his development.

It is a road I have been down before with my daughter who was born with a unilateral hearing loss and to be perfectly frank, it is not one I care to go down again. Fortunately, my daughter has adapted well to her hearing loss which has been registered by an audiologist as "mild to profound". To you and me it means she is relying on one ear to hear speech and the noises which occur in her environment. The program my daughter and I were enrolled consisted of regular home visits, paperwork and tedious homework. Personally, I think I was just filling someones quota. Though I think there is a place for early intervention for many families it wasn't right for Maggie and I, and I should have spoken up about it. Hindsight is twenty-twenty.

Now here I am again, going through the motions with Ryan. As a mother I want to provide my children with the best possible start in life and if that means they need a little extra help then so be it but no parent wants to hear their child is "developmentally delayed". What and whose benchmark do you use to decide if your child is delayed and how do you differentiate between personality and actuality of a so called delay that requires some sort of intervention? And when is it okay to speak out if you want to decline services without it becoming a black mark on your report card? These are the questions which have been rolling around in my head the past few weeks.

Of course, I am asking these question rhetorically, I don't really need an answer. I know the answer. I watch my son, and I love him unconditionally and protect him as I see fit. That is not to say that it is going to be easy to deflect uncensored judgement or criticism no more than it will be easy to accept some truths that may be very difficult to hear; after all nobody said being a parent would be easy. Sometimes it feels like a catch twenty-two.

Since our first home visit my anxieties about my son and his speech has watered down a lot. It seems as if Ryan is extended himself beyond his arms length to prove to me that he is more than capable of reaching milestones. If I could only describe the scene to you as he logically figured out how to get three soccer balls from the back gate back into the blow-up pool by picking each one up at time and then tossing them until they reached the poolside instead of fumbling to pick them all up and carry them to the poolside at the same time. My Ryan may not be talking yet, but his father and I adore him and can see the genius inside milling away.