Never Too Late

The Boy is reading.

READING

A BOOK

My boy is READING A BOOK!


WOW! I didn't know if I'd ever type that sentence. And it is amazing, awesome, wonderful, any and all of those adjectives. I am truly astounded. And honestly, a little bit relieved. I have been telling anyone who would listen for the past 2 years that my boy would learn to read. I didn't care it if took until he was 10 or 20 or 30, my boy would read. I knew he was capable, we just had to figure out how to teach him.

A year ago he was no where near ready for this. Oh, we tried. How we tried. We worked on phonics for 2 years. But he just never got it. Phonics was not working for him. At all. He knew the sounds of the letters, he just couldn't translate that into sounding out words. It was frustrating. Very frustrating. For everyone involved.

With the switch to the new school, we switched to a sight reading program. After all, The Boy has a memory like a steel trap. He forgets nothing. (It often comes back to haunt me.) So the new school thought we should capitalize on that to start him on the path to reading. So we put it in his IEP in October; he would start the Edmark Reading Program with the goal of learning 10 sight words this school year. I know, that's not a lofty goal. But with a 9 year old that was not reading at all, we wanted an attainable goal. Rather have a realistic goal that he shatters than a lofty goal he cannot reach. It did not mean that they would stop teaching new words once he reached 10.

And stop they did not. He has now surpassed his goal of 10 words, knowing about twice that many. And the first semester has just ended, we still have half the school year to go! He's leaning 2 new words a week. Small books from the program come home for him to read at night. My boy is reading books to me. This. is. HUGE.

I can honestly tell you that it does not matter if they are 4 years old or 9 years old, the first time your child reads a book to you the joy, pride, excitement, and just plain awesomeness you will feel is the same. It really does not matter how old they are. 

A very wise therapist once told me that there are no expiration dates on developmental milestones. None indeed. The Boy has never met a milestone "on time". Not one. Yet he continues to meet them, even master some; all in his own time, in his own way. And we have learned to not only accept his journey, but to respect it. It is an amazing journey to watch.

That kid inspires me. It is never too late.  

Echolalia

Back when we were trying to get a diagnosis, any diagnosis, for The Boy and I was asked about echolalia I said he doesn't do that. And I was wrong. I was not completely versed (probably still not) in the subtleties of echolalia. The Boy most certainly does echo words and phrases, its just not always very obvious. And I am learning to see the different situation where he really does use echolalia.

When I look back now (hind sight is much closer to 20/20) I can see that whenever we asked if he wanted milk or water, he always answered water. Or whatever the last choice was. I finally figured this out by asking the same question in different orders a few times in a row. 

Do you want to wear jeans or sweats? 

Sweats. 

Do you want to wear sweats or jeans? 

Jeans.

All within one minute of each other. We've now learned to wait a few beats, then ask Which ones do you want? And then he can usually tell us what he really wants. Thankfully the days of meltdowns over misunderstanding his choices are (mostly) over.

I picked up on another subtle echo just last week. As I talked about in my post "We Survived...I Think", The Boy has had one illness after another this fall/winter. Last week when he came down with another (thankfully short lived) virus he started asking "You OK?" all the time. And I couldn't figure out why he kept asking me if I was OK. Until I saw the sniffles and runny nose. And it finally dawned on me, he was trying to tell me that he wasn't OK. So the next time he asked me I didn't just answer "Yes I'm fine", I then asked him if he was OK. And he said "No, don't feel good".

When ever The Boy is sick we ask him (probably too many times) "Are you OK"? So naturally, when he doesn't feel good he echoes "You OK"? It is not obvious (at least it wasn't to me initially) but he is echoing what we say to him when he's sick. Really, now that I'm writing about it, it is sort of obvious.

He does something similar whenever he has an accident or something breaks. He will yell "I OK!" Because what is the first thing you say when an accident occurs? "Are you OK?" So he gets straight to the point and the first thing he says is "I OK". Whenever we hear those 2 words, we know we need to go investigate. This may not be a true case of echolalia, but it does show how he makes strong associations between phrases and events.

I'm sure I'll discover more and more instances of where he actually does echo words and phrases. Its a never ending learning curve for me.