When my third son came along, I was confident he was the one who would let me finally just sit back and enjoy the ride of being a mother to three crazy boys without constant vigilance and worry. And when it comes down to it, that’s really kind of one of my biggest goals in life -- right behind “raise good people.” I really just want to enjoy the ride.
By that time, between my first two boys, I had experienced what I thought was a pretty generous variety of kid issues, worries, and developmental timetables. Late-talker, early talker, early walker, late walker, not eating, colic, asthma, rsv, stitches, ear tubes, dislocated elbows, fevers, colds, that freaky five-day fever I was totally sure was something life-threatening but turned out to just be one of those viruses every kid gets eventually... the list goes on and on. The point is, I had learned a LOT in six-and-a-half years and two kids. At least, I thought I had. I figured whatever a third child could throw at me, I had probably seen it before and could handle it without even breaking stride.
Looking back, I probably should have realized I was in for a special kind of fun when number three decided to come into the world looking not face-up, not face-down, but face-sideways -- nature’s brilliant foreshadowing of a child who was going to do a LOT of things on his own terms.
It actually WAS all going quite well in the beginning and I was progressing steadily toward my goal of being that chilled-out mom of three boys in the mental snapshot I had created for myself.
In the span of a year, I hadn’t rushed the new one to the pediatrician for any hangnails. I didn’t check on him during naps to make sure he was still breathing (often). I didn’t rush to his side when he’d fall or bump his head. I let him try all kinds of things on his own that I never would have let the other ones do at that age. I forgot to write the exact dates of some of his milestones in the baby book or that they happened at all. I regularly forgot how many months old he was and sometimes had to double check whether I’d even remembered to put him in the car with us.
(Perhaps, with that last one, this is a good time to mention that someone overlooked my nomination for 2010 Mom of the Year?)
One thing I was particularly proud of myself for though was not freaking out when he didn’t start talking on schedule.
“Oh, he’s on his own timetable!” I would tell people. “ I’ve had one of these before. He’ll talk when he’s ready!”
I did well playing it cool, that is, until he reached the age when my first-born son (my late-talker) had said his first words, which were all, of course, painstakingly documented in his baby book complete with date, time and context.
I polled every mom I knew. “Do you think I should call early intervention? He should be saying things by now, right?” Though the most non-alarmist among my mom friends would insist he was probably fine, others would encourage me to call, softening it with things like “He’s a boy and he’s a third child... that’s probably all it is. I’m sure he’s FINE... but maybe you should look into it anyway. You know, just in case!”
Forget actual words, my son was 15 months old at that point and hadn’t babbled so much as mama or dada, or really any other syllable consistently. No matter what books or websites I consulted, and trust me, it was a lot, I couldn’t find a single one that would tell me it was some variant on “normal”. Not that it mattered anyway because I knew in my heart it wasn’t.
On any given day, he was either completely quiet or whining and screaming out of frustration. As each month passed with no new sounds or words, the worry began to creep in. I was in new territory, wandering aimlessly without map or plan -- only a dog-eared copy of “What to Expect :The Toddler Years” that I wasn't finding particularly helpful.
Finally, I broke down and made the phone call to Infants and Toddlers. I can admit now that it took a LOT for me to get to that point. It took coming to terms with the fact that, even the third time around, I didn’t have all the answers, that I needed help, and that, third time around or not, I was “first-time-worried” all over again.
I don’t remember much about that initial call except thinking the voice on the other end sounded very kind and patient even though I know I probably sounded like a bit of a handful. After that phone call and some standard paperwork, they were going to come evaluate my son to decide if he qualified for their services.
The women who came to my house were all business from the get-go, grilling me about my pregnancy, my son’s birth, my concerns, what he did and didn’t do. They started throwing around words to each other like "delay" and "expressive language" and "tongue movements". They asked me a flurry of questions like "Does he lick an ice cream cone?" And I couldn't, for the life of me, remember if he could lick an ice cream cone or, for that matter, if he had even HAD an ice cream cone.
They scribbled notes about him on official looking multi-colored triplicate forms and asked him to say and do things that he couldn’t even come close to doing. Their concern was obvious and it didn’t take them long to conclude he was definitely speech-delayed.
Something about all the cold, technical terms being thrown around so casually, particularly the word “delay”, triggered some sort of instinctive and primal mama bear mode in me and I vividly remember mentally shutting down and just wanting them to get out of my house as quickly as possible.
They wanted me to sign off on starting services that day, but I said no, that I wanted to give it a couple months, work with him myself, and see if he progressed. I could tell this wasn’t really the answer they wanted, but they left me with their phone numbers, some tips, and a promise that whenever we were ready, we could call and get things started.
I assumed I would ever see them again, which, in hindsight, was probably a dumb assumption because you can’t go 500 feet in our town without running into someone you know.
Sure enough, one of the evaluators who had come to our house surfaced at my middle son’s preschool one afternoon a month later. She immediately spotted us despite my best efforts to will myself to be invisible. Better yet, she remembered our names and asked me how my son was doing. I had no choice but answer truthfully that he had LITERALLY done exactly nothing new since last we had spoken. “I’ll give you guys a call soon!” I promised as we high-tailed it out the door. I really did have every intention of calling. Just not that day...
My phone rang later that afternoon, thwarting my efforts at further procrastination. “Since when are government agencies this efficient?” I thought to myself as I picked it up. The same friendly voice I had spoken to the month before said she would send some people back out to get my signature on the paperwork to start services and then they’d send an early intervention teacher who would start working with my son.
Throughout this whole process, I had never once really known quite what to expect. It was becoming the running theme and continued to be true three weeks later when our doorbell rang.
I opened the door and that’s when Cindy stepped into our lives, like our very own Mary Poppins, if Mary Poppins wore Under Armour and carried a Vera Bradley tote instead of a carpet bag.
My son sized her up skeptically from a distance at first while she introduced herself and asked me some questions. He cried a little and climbed up into my lap. Then he watched intently as she pulled a shape sorter from her bottomless bag, balanced a star shape on top of her head and dramatically achoo-ed it off onto the floor.
He was instantly enchanted.
After a few more achoos, he jumped down from my lap and scampered across the room to get a matching star shape from his toy house across the room, brought it back and did the sign for “please” to ask to her sneeze THAT off of her head too. I'm fairly sure this is the universal toddler sign for friendship.
That’s the first time Ms. Cindy won.
You see, she warned me she ALWAYS wins. And, as Jonathan and I would quickly learn, she wasn’t kidding.
It wasn’t all fun and games though. The next few months were fraught with battles. Cindy came every other Monday for a little while, and then every Monday; and after the first couple visits, my son decided he didn’t exactly appreciate her winning streak. She didn’t let him get away with anything. She always pushed him to his breaking point in an effort to get him to do just a little more, to sit a little bit longer, to make more of an effort to make sounds and to try to communicate with us. There were many days where all three of us were red-faced and sweating, Cindy and I from trying to contain Jonathan to make him work and Jonathan from fighting to escape.
I began to absolutely dread Mondays. It was hard to watch my child become so frustrated and even harder to see him be pushed to the point of becoming upset. He would scream, cry, and arch his back to escape from his highchair.
She made subtle suggestions that maybe there was something bigger going on than just a speech delay, pointing out how it was a struggle to get him make eye contact, how he would get stuck on certain actions and activities, and host of other random things, most of which I never would have noticed on my own or if I had, I might not have given a second thought to. I knew enough to know what these concerns pointed to and together, they formed a picture of my youngest son that I didn’t recognize, one I didn’t want to see or worse, be true. I remember telling her over and over again that I was worried she was only seeing him at his worst and would argue that he was different for me.
I knew deep down though that most everything she was saying was true. Add to that, my son still wasn’t talking and nothing I knew how to do was changing anything. And if it was hard to admit I needed help with him, it was even harder to admit something might actually be wrong.
It would be months before I stopped trying to prove to myself and to his teacher that was nothing wrong other than a speech delay, and started to realize and accept that maybe there was and maybe there wasn’t; but that fighting the work she was doing with him wasn’t going to help any of us.
And the work Cindy did was not just with my son. She challenged me too -- to play differently, actively, attentively, and creatively. I learned SO many ways I had never thought of to use the toys we had to encourage everything from eye contact to motor skills to language. I learned how to engage him in productive games and activities that helped him practice all the things we were working toward.
It became a true team effort and we started seeing results with his speech. First sounds. Then single words. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, full sentences. He went from throwing himself on the floor and screaming when Cindy would visit, to running to the door to greet her with hugs and asking her what she had in her toy bag that day.
Our family dynamics changed for the better too. Things were less stressful, he became more manageable, less frustrated, more present with us and interested in my husband and in me and in his two brothers.
Fast forward to a year and a half after we started this journey, and we have a completely different child than the one we started with. He has some quirks and some social weaknesses, and he can certainly be challenging at times. More than likely, there is something bigger at work that we'll eventually get answers for... but I no longer worry there is something terribly wrong. He’s a happy, funny, social, ridiculously talkative almost-three-year-old. When I think back to 15 months ago when I really wondered if he would ever talk, it’s absolutely astonishing to me how far he has come.
The third time around, I thought I knew it all, but what I learned is that sometimes the most valuable knowledge you can have as a mom is knowing when you need help and following your instincts. I know I am SO thankful I asked for help and I’m even more thankful that help was there in the form of “our” Ms. Cindy.
When I start to get concerned my son isn't progressing or we hit a particularly challenging phase and I start to worry myself in circles about all the possibilities of what could be wrong, Cindy reminds me time and time again, “I KNOW early intervention works.”
And I can tell you... it really does. My son is proof.
This morning, he asked me to come to his room to play with him, something he didn’t do even as recently as a month ago. We played “bear bed”, a game he invented where he puts all of his stuffed animals to bed and reads them stories, all the while narrating the whole bedtime routine. While we played, I soaked in the comforting normalcy of it all.
My words of wisdom to the next family who opens their door to find Ms. Cindy standing there? Brace yourself. She really does ALWAYS win.
But in the end, the truth is that we ALL won -- my son, for obvious reasons, our family, and me, because, a big part of what I learned from watching his amazing teacher play with him and laugh with him is how to really just enjoy the ride... even with no map, some bumps in the road, and absolutely no idea where we are going to end up.
