"Therrible Threes"

If you are not a parent, or are a new parent, don't let anybody fool you into thinking there is such a thing as the "Terrible Twos" with kids.  There isn't.  In fact, the only reason the "Twos" are called "Terrible", I think, is because of the hard "T" sound that begins both words.  "Therrible Threes" is more accurate.  When my older son was two, life was wonderful.  He slept through the night, was progressively on his way to being fully potty trained, still took decent naps during the afternoon, and genuinely wanted to share.  Unlike babies, he didn't put everything he could get his hands on into his mouth (we are reliving that nightmare with a new baby in the house as legos, paper, dog food, and you name it go straight down the hatch).  He was generally playful and still liked his mommy and daddy and his every aim was to please us.

Something drastic happened almost overnight.  On the day before his third birthday, we put our sweet little toddler to bed, without a fuss, but a ferocious monster woke up in his place the next morning.  Throughout the next year, that same ferocious monster woke up morning after morning.  We had been told that the twos were terrible, and when age two passed, we thought we had been spoiled.  Little did we know that many other seasoned parents had gone through the same thing: the "Therrible Threes".  He no longer wanted to please us.  His life was now marked with temper tantrums, throwing food, and fighting us at bedtime.  He didn't want to go outside to play, but he didn't want to be inside either.  Our happy-go-lucky two year old turned into an indecisive hard to please three year old.  He no longer wanted to please us.  Quite the opposite; it seemed as if the more frustrated he made us, the more satisfied he became.    

Now, we have another three year old who happens to be Autistic.  There are some quirks and character traits he displays that are clearly derived from Autism.  But he is also three.  So now, we're having a hard time deciphering between what is Autism and what is "3".  Breakfast time, lunchtime, dinnertime, bedtime, potty time, play time and any time are all "Therrible."  

The kid has been drinking from a cup for a long time now, and since he is still a little guy, we expect the occasional "spilled milk."  However, once in a while (and by "once in a while" I mean "daily"), he takes a big drink and then lets the contents in his mouth dribble down his chin, onto his lap.  We think to ourselves, "Is that typical with most autistic kids?  Do many of them just let their drink dribble onto their laps?"  Often times, he asks for another drink and against better judgment, we oblige thinking, "it was just an accident, he didn't mean it."  This happened just the other day.  He took a big drink of milk and slowly spit it out of his mouth.  When he asked, I kindly gave him another drink, only to have him turn the cup upside down and pour the milk directly onto the floor.  This, of course, is followed by a giggle as he looks up at us with his mischievous grin.

Or, take his newfound life as an exhibitionist.  Our sweet, compliant two-year old Matt-Man used to let us dress him any way we chose, and he would be satisfied to wear clothes, period.  He is now learning to dress himself which is great!  At some point, the kid has to learn independence.  At the same time, he is also learning to undress himself which, while also a great step toward independence, is also turning into a nightmare.  "Matt-Man, go put your pants on," we say, as he is running around the house in a tee-shirt and undies.  I know he can do that, I've seen him do that before.  Yet of late, he returns wearing nothing at all!  Just the other night, we put both boys to bed, fully clothed, and like all brothers who share a room do, our boys did not fall immediately asleep.  Instead, they played in their bedrooms, with lights off, causing a ruckus, as boys do.  And as dads do, I went in to break up the party and remind them that they were to go to sleep lest they meet the wrath of dad.  Upon entering the bedroom, however, there I found my little Matt-Man naked as the day he was born, laughing his silly little head off.

One last example.  He is also learning to go potty, which again, is a positive thing.  This has been a long time coming.  He has been in diapers for far too long and those things ain't cheap.  Even better, he is learning to pee standing up much earlier than Nathan ever did.  It won't be long before he and his brother are in the bathroom having a "sword fight" into the toilet.  In the meantime, here he is, standing on his red stool, proudly shooting a long stream of urine at a Cheerio tossed in there for him to have something to aim at.  It has gotten to the point where he's getting pretty good at it too.  "Matt-Man, get on the stool and go potty!" is all we have to say, and he does it.  Except, recently, he had a change of plans.  We were in a bit of a hurry, so I opened the toilet, placed him on the red stool, gave him a target and said, "Go Pee".  Then I left to attend to the baby.  When I returned, he had shut the lid of the toilet and was peeing on the lid, laughing hysterically.  I caught him in mid-stream and yelled, "Matthew, NO!"  But I was too late.  He simply looked up at me with his mischievous grin and kept peeing on the lid, watching his urine puddle on the floor.  

He is cute and adorable and such fun.  Our little Matt-Man has an infectious laugh, a grin that will melt the hardest heart, and blue eyes that could convince a pretty girl to do anything he wanted.  He has some quirky behaviors strictly tied to Autism, like lining up toys, echoing what he hears, staring at patterns, and constantly opening and closing doors.  Yet, he also has some behaviors that prove he is a three-year-old, like peeing and pooping anywhere except into the toilet, running through the house naked, and dumping milk on the floor, almost for sport.  Whereas he used to do everything to please us, now it seems as if his one desire in life is to make me bald by my next birthday.  He's doing quite well, thank you very much.  Yes, my little Matt-Man is cute, adorable, and such fun, and also "Therrible."

“Echolalia” and Small Victories (and Small Victories)

“Echolalia” is one of the fun new words that has entered our vocabulary in the recent past. Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines it as “The often pathological repetition of what is said by other people as if echoing them.”  Echoes can be fun.  There are some places where you can talk and then hear your own words bouncing off of walls, or coming back at you from inside a cave.  “Echolalia” is when someone else echoes what you say.  For the longest time, this is how Matt-Man has talked, and even to this day his speech is very much echoing word-for-word the things we say.  It’s like he is a cave, and when I speak to him, whatever I say bounces right back.

In general, this is how all people learn to talk.  Our infant daughter is learning to talk and does her best to mimic the consonant-vowel combinations we say to her.  Evangeline won the game of getting her to say “mama” before I could get her to say “dada”.  Pretty soon, however, her vocabulary will increase to about 10 words she can use on a regular basis and after that, her speech will boom exponentially.  All of the words any of us know were words that we heard someone else use and we found the right context in which to use them.

My 5-year old participates in “echolalia”; the annoying 5-year old version where a child repeats everything you say just for the sake of being annoying.  For instance,

Me: Nathan, what are you doing?
Him: Nathan, what are you doing?
Me: No seriously, what the heck are you doing?
Him: No seriously, what the heck are you doing?
Me: Stop it, that’s annoying!
Him: Stop it, that’s annoying!

Even verbal threats can’t stop him from this.  The sequence of “I speak” and “he obnoxiously repeats” usually ends when I say, “Nathan eats boogers!”  That is something he will not echo.

While all children learn to talk by repeating what others say, and while other children repeat what you say just to get on your nerves, Matt-Man echoes to an obsessive degree, as do many verbal Autistic kids.  It was cute to begin with.  We would encourage his speech by saying, “Matt-Man, say ‘Mommy’”.  He would respond with the exact same phrase, word-for-word.

“Hey Matt-Man, let’s go for a walk.”
“Matt-Man, it’s time for a bath.”
“Come and get your diaper changed, buddy.”

All of these and more would receive the same “echolalic” response.  Again, all kids learn to speak by repeating words they heard from someone else.  Yet at some point, kids take their corpus of words and make it their own.  They begin to use those words in a context that makes sense and can respond appropriately to questions when asked.  I could have a conversation with my older son when he was 2.  Granted, it was a very basic conversation, usually about what was for lunch or Sesame Street, but he had taken the words he learned and used them to have a meaningful dialogue with me.  This has been hard to come by for Matt-Man.

He is steadily improving, even within the last few months (now that he is almost 4).  Much of his speech is still echolalia, but more and more his repetition is in context.  He clearly repeats words and phrases he has heard us say, but he uses them at the right time.  He is exceptionally food-motivated, and the only time he will voluntarily engage us in conversation is when he wants a snack, or lunch, or a snack, or a drink, or a snack.  We used to say, “Do you want some peanut-butter toast?” and he would answer, “You want some peanut-butter toast.”  It was only a few months ago before he would switch pronouns and say, “I want some peanut-butter toast” when asked.  And now, he doesn’t even need to be asked.  Instead, he will tell us, “I want some peanut-butter toast.”  We had never been more ready and willing to satisfy a child’s desire for a snack than we were the first time he, on his own, asked for some food.

It took no time to convince him to talk when motivated by food, and it seems, much to the chagrin of mom and dad, that he echoes those things we would prefer he didn’t remember.  For instance:

Me, yelling at the TV: That stupid idiot!  If you’re a major leaguer, you should be able to turn a routine double-play!
Matt-Man: Oh no, that stupid idiot!

Finally, there are those things we would give a kidney to hear him say and no matter how hard we try, he simply will not budge.  We have tried for the longest time to get him to say, “I love you, mommy,” or “daddy.”  It’s funny; I could probably get him to recite the Pledge of Allegiance backwards if it involved receiving a Twix, and just about everything he hears throughout the course of a day, he echoes, but if we try to fix his mind on loving mommy and daddy, he stares at us stone-faced.  He can copy his brother when he says, “Guess What?  Chicken-Butt!” but I couldn’t pay him to say, “I love daddy,” even with a Twix.

However, just the other night, we got what has been the biggest, most uplifting surprise to date.  We follow a pretty regular bedtime routine: clothes off, go potty, jammies on, brush teeth, hop in bed, pray with mom and dad, kiss and hug goodnight.  This is usually where we push the hardest, “Say, ‘I love you mommy’. . .” met with the same stone face every night.  That particular night, nothing was out of the ordinary.  The boys undressed, went potty, put their jammies on, brushed their teeth, hopped in bed, prayed with us, and got a kiss and hug from us.  And as always, we tried to get Matt to say, “I love you mommy/daddy,” and not surprisingly, we were met with a stone face.  Nevertheless, we told Matt that we loved him, and told Nate the same.  That’s the moment when we had the biggest surprise, at least in Matt’s life.  Totally unprompted, and without us having to offer him a Twix, Matt-Man said in the clearest, most distinct voice, “I love you, Nate.”

Echolalia, for sure, but echolalia with incredible meaning.  Echolalia, but genuine and sincere.  Echolalia, but Matt-Man meant it when he said, “I love you, Nate.”  The dad in me would love for that to have been my name, but not only did Matt-Man echo in context, he also expressed affection for his very best friend—something that has been incredibly hard to come by.  I am satisfied with that.

Echolalia can be cute.  It can also be a bit frustrating.  Sometimes I wish I could just chat with my kid, about bugs, snowmen, baseball, or cars.  I can’t do that.  I have good reason to hope that some day I will be able to do just those things, but if God were to forbid him ever to speak another word, we will always have the memory of those unprompted, sincere words from one brother to another, “I love you, Nate.”  It was meaningful to us, his parents, and you bet it was meaningful to Nathan too!  So frustrating as it may be, we celebrate the small victories.

Progress

I wanted to share excerpts from an email and video I received from Matt's therapist this morning.  So encouraging to see as a mom.

"... I love, love, love to work with Matthew.  He is a puzzle in the works.  I am so encouraged with his progress.  Yesterday was really an amazing day.  He was not just conversational for just a little part of the day, he was off and on for the whole day.  I hid things I knew he liked before he came in the room in the morning and after he was there an hour or so he looked at me and said, "I want the drums".  So, I said, "oh, okay, here they are".  Then there were several other items that I did that with.  It was a bit of a test for him.  This was because we came off of a weekend where I knew that his routine of school had not happened for several days.  For him to recall such an appropriate request was awesome.  I can tell that you are working with him at home on a lot of things.  You as parents are the real reason for his growing success.  Your work is what makes the difference.  There is no one else more important or more influential in Matthew's life than his family, most specifically you as parents.

...To  explain the video.  I had made a lengthy video but it will only allow for me to send 42 seconds.... (what a rip off, lol)  We are sitting in circle time in the morning.  Between his legs are weather pictures (sun, snow, clouds, rain, and fog).  When we sing the song we are doing different motions (clapping, rubbing hands, patting knees, etc.).  He is doing all of the motions without my prompting at all.  He is watching the teacher but then does look to me for approval.  He makes great eye contact and continues with the motions as he is looking at me.  He also was pointing to each picture (the right one) as we sang about it.  "

Matt has had a good week at home too.  He initiated play with me a few days ago without any prompting from me at all for the first time I can remember.  I've only caught him lining up items twice this week (that used to be something he did whenever he had the chance).

I'm thankful for these small victories.