Hug Twice

Before I had children I had a lot of idealized versions of how things would be in my head. I was going to do a lot of things, and one of those things was homeschool my kids. Once I had kids, I wasn’t completely sure if that was what I was going to do, but I was still leaning strongly in that direction.

But then CJ, my oldest, moved from baby to toddler, and he wasn’t talking as much as he should. In fact, he *really* wasn’t talking as much as he should, but we didn’t realize it was as big a deal as it was. He’s a boy, people would say, boys are slower to talk. Besides, he walked soooo early and he could practically run at 10 months - of course something else would take longer. And I believed that, and we kept encouraging him to talk and trying to get him to communicate, but we had no idea what we were doing. We’re not speech therapists, after all.

So when CJ turned 2, I decided to branch out into semi-organized education, of a sort, and enrolled him in a once a week Parents Day Out program for two hours a week to give him a chance to talk to other kids. And it seemed to help a little, but he still wasn’t really talking. At 3, we switched him to a new pediatrician, and that doctor had us take him for language testing, and that is when we learned CJ has a very significant speech delay.

We first enrolled him in twice weekly speech therapy classes but that wasn’t enough, so he now goes to a 5 day a week (half day) program through the public school system. And unlike all of our efforts to get him to talk more - this is working. His speech is developing by leaps and bounds and he is still significantly behind, but I can almost see him catching up to other kids his age every day.

In some ways, this has been an okay process for me. He loves school, just adores it, so that makes it easier. The hardest part was realizing that my son needed help that I just couldn’t give him myself. I’ve long held this idea that I could learn whatever I needed to and do whatever necessary to educate my children. But in this case, I honestly could not. We’ve learned lots of ways to help him communicate now, but I still don’t make progress with him as well as his speech therapists do.

So now, I don’t know. I don’t know if I’ll change course and homeschool when it comes time for kindergarten (he is 3 right now) or if that will even be a feasible option for him, and I don’t know how I’d feel about homeschooling my daughter (who is 1) but not my son. For now, he still needs more help than I can give him. And that has been a hard realization to accept.

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Apparently all I have to do is hide a puzzle piece.

Like many moms of three year olds, I have a hard time getting my son to clean up after himself.  Some days , the playroom looks like a tornado went through it.  We ask, we work with him on picking up after himself, we take away toys, some things work, some not so much.  But today, I made a discovery.

We were putting the puzzles away, CJ and I, and there were a few pieces missing.  CJ is very particular about things like that, and immediately started asking “Where are the pieces, mommy?“.  I told him that they probably were mixed in all the flashcards and blocks he had strewn all over the floor, and asked him to help me put them away.  Instead of running off, saying no, or otherwise disobeying, CJ readily agreed and started picking up flashcards in earnest and putting blocks in their bucket.  No whining, no fussing, no tantrum, he was actually pretty happy to be cleaning up and excited every time he discovered a missing puzzle piece.

And the wonder of it was, once we found all the pieces, he kept helping clean up.  In fact, we would have gotten the entire playroom perfectly picked up and put away, if is wasn’t for his sister following behind us dumping things out of bins and taking all the pieces out of the puzzles.

It was cute though, because CJ kept saying “No Alexa, we’re cleaning up!“.  She chose to ignore him. 

So the next time I need the playroom to get a good cleaning, I’ll have to hide a puzzle piece or two.

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CJ attends a public special education preschool for his speech delay, and once every two months or so, it is our responsibility to provide snack for the week.  In the past, I’ve just picked things I know he likes and sent them in with him.  This time, I wanted to try and involve him a little more.  He has to bring in snack next week, so I bundled him up with me this weekend and off we went to grocery shop.

I really dislike bringing the kids with me when I grocery shop.  It is distracting and takes twice as long.  But I did it anyway, because I wanted CJ to take ownership of his snacks.   And maybe we’d have some encouraging conversations as well in the process.  The things I do. 

I started off showing CJ all the things he could choose for snacks.  He had made one request - snowballs, which are bagels with cream cheese - and I was excited about that because it meant he understood what I was talking about.  While we were in the store, he kept choosing more and more things.  If it was up to him, we would have had enough snacks for the rest of the school year.  I was surprised because he will only eat a limited number of things at home, but he chose things to take for snack like oranges (which he never seems to eat at home) and wheat crackers, as well as the typical rice cakes and animal crackers, two CJ snacking staples.

I let him make choices between different items to stay within our budget as well as to have the right number of snacks for the days we provide snack, and he really didn’t get too upset about having to put some back.  The only thing I completely vetoed were bananas - he thinks he likes bananas but any time he takes a bite of one he gags and almost throws up, so I am not sending those to school.

He’s requested oranges and animal crackers to take with him for snack today, so we’ll see if he eats the oranges.  I’ve written a note to his teachers asking to let me know.  Hopefully they don’t mind peeling them. 

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Emily at Remodeling This Life awarded me a very sweet award, the “I’ve Got A Friend In You” award.

Thank you so much Emily! I am proud to call you my friend. I’m truly touched.

I am not sure how many people I am supposed to pass it on to, and I don’t know too many mom-bloggers, so I am just going to pass it on to Lynnae at From Under the Clutter. She hasn’t been blogging as much lately because she is truly… stuck… under the clutter and is digging out, but she’s making good progress on her decluttering project. Thanks so much for all the help you have given me!

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I have a confession to make.

I often don’t correct things that I know I should. Not big huge things, we are working hard on learning sentence structure and how to speak coherently, and I don’t want to derail that at all. But the little things…

Well, they melt my heart. I truly have been trying to teach CJ “Thirty” but yet I giggle every time he says “Twenty-Ten”. And even though I would like him to acknowledge “Thursday” as a day of the week, I think “Wednesday Wednesday Friday” is just adorable.

I was never really one to baby talk to my kids. I didn’t repeat their baby babble sounds, and I didn’t talk to them in a weird voice with babyish inflection. Yet I find myself, as CJ gets older, almost unconciously adopting some of the “off” things he says and accepting them as normal vocabulary. Not on purpose, but…

Admit it, it’s cute. And they’ll outgrow it before you even realize it anyway. Savor the cuteness.

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