Matt-Man's Going to Summer Camp!!

Matt-Man works harder than any other 6 year old I know.  In fact he's been forced to work hard since starting therapy full-time as a 3 year old.  He has to.  Simple tasks of daily living and communication are not simple to him.  He has had to invest many hours to learn each task of life slowly and as a whole series of smaller tasks.  Matt-Man doesn't get summers off.  He spends his summers in therapy or summer school, working hard all day.  Well, this year will finally be different.  For the first time ever, Matt is going to summer camp!

The Special Recreation Association in our area provides a summer day camp that is specifically designed with autistic children in mind.  The days are carefully structured and aides are available to help the campers out.  He will spend his days enjoying music, art, games, socializing, and swimming and his evenings at home with us.

We are so thankful for this opportunity.  We are considered non-residents of the districts served by this camp and had to remain on the waiting list until all residents had registered, praying that there would be a spot left for Matt-Man.  We were ecstatic to get the call that he was in.

Please pray that this is a good summer of fun and growth for him.  Matt-man has very few friends.  Not because he doesn't like other kids but because he doesn't know how to interact with them appropriately.  I've often watched him try to initiate contact with other kids his age only to get funny looks and be ignored.  I would love to see him develop friendships and better social skills this summer!

Matt-Man with his baby brother.  He is becoming a good playmate!

What's Helpful, and What Isn't

What often happens with blogs is that one writer assumes the duty of speaking on behalf of an entire community, even when the community hasn’t granted that one the authority do to so.  For me, whenever I see an Evangelical Christian saying on behalf of other Evangelical Christians something I would never say (like, Vote For ....), a small part of me throws up on the inside.  

So in what follows, I do not presume to speak on behalf of the entire community of special needs.  Our reason for writing this blog is very narrow: we want a place to share our personal experiences, and for you to get to know Matthew.  I am not the voice of authority, so please do not interpret this as “What All Dads Of Special Needs Children Want You To Know.”  We are hardly experts on Matthew, let alone the entire world of Autism and 15q24. 

When people hear we have a special-needs child, there are various responses.  Very few of them are intentionally hurtful and bigoted, and I refuse to dignify those by writing about them any further.  Most of the responses are wrought with good intentions, even if those good intentions fail to land.  Some offers of advice, comfort, or encouragement I have found to be a little less than helpful:

• You have a son with Autism?  Oh, my sister’s husband’s uncle’s neighbor’s son has Autism too (I appreciate the attempt to relate, but even my experiences with Matt are different from another dad’s experiences with his kid. Don’t pretend you know what it’s like)
• There’s no such thing as “normal” (When my 14-month-old has better fine-motor skills than my 6-year old, that’s not normal)
• Someday you’ll miss this (This seems more like an attempt to guilt me into enjoying the harder parts of parenting. It may be true, but is entirely unhelpful in the present)
• Have you tried this diet/therapy/insert-crunchy-advice-here? (It’s hard enough to dress my kid, let alone research the gamut of fad-diets)
• God doesn’t make mistakes (Really? Then why did Jesus bother healing a man who was born blind in John 9?  Why would he bother healing anyone for that matter?)
• God gave you a son like Matthew because he knew you could handle it (No I can’t)

I have never found any of these to be helpful, but I also recognize these are all given with good intentions.  I have learned to be extra patient because these responses, though they may be unhelpful (and even at times, hurtful) they are nevertheless given with sincere love and a desire to encourage, relate, and even join us on the journey.  So I do not belittle the honest attempts made by good people to stand alongside us.  On the other hand, what follows are some things we, personally, have found to be helpful.

How’s it going?  No seriously, how are things going in your home?  

Just the other day, a friend genuinely wanted to know what was going on and didn’t buy that things were “fine.”  After not letting me leave until he pressed further, I explained to him that life with Matthew is a bit like taking two steps forward, one step back.  This particular month has been “one-step-back.”  The entire time I shared that with him, he didn’t stop looking into my eyes with deep concern.  He didn’t try to sympathize with me but simply gave me the freedom to vent frustration.  And he offered me absolutely no advice, just a listening ear without judgment.  And as a person of faith, I also appreciated his promise to pray for our family, and then the follow-up text messages indicating he was, in that moment, doing just that: praying.

That really sucks!

This phrase I learned from Evangeline when she was gigantically pregnant with our last child.  She was complaining about her feet, knees, hips, and how nothing fit her anymore.  Fresh out of ideas, I offered some trite platitude about how I wish I could help, and suggested she buy bigger clothes.  Instead of breaking my nose, she said, “Danny, all I really want to hear from you is, Evangeline, that sucks!”  Sometimes we’re not looking for help, or answers.  Sometimes we simply need a safe outlet to blow off steam.  

Teach me how to interact with Matthew

Our church is small, but filled with dear people who earnestly want to know how to relate to Matthew in a positive and meaningful way.  So instead of simply giving up and shuffling him off into a corner with a tablet, they ask.  Matthew was doing this in class; is that normal?  If he starts to do that, how do I respond?  What can I do to make sure he gets the most out of this class?  Nothing is more encouraging to us than people who love Matthew enough to go the extra mile to make him feel special.  

Why don’t you let me take the kids for the weekend?

Honestly, sometimes our life feels like a prison sentence: hard labor under the Special-Needs Warden.  Sometimes just surviving another day is quite literally all we can accomplish.  The routines, doctors appointments, medications, IEP meetings, report cards, and the day to day drag every last ounce of energy we have.  With our other kids, we have complete confidence that they will, at some point in their lives, be self-sufficient contributing members of society.  We sure hope for a great surprise, but with Matthew, we just don’t see it yet.  Will he still be living at home when he’s 25?  35?  Will we ever see an end to this?  Will there be even one day in his entire life where he doesn’t wake up and cry?  Sometimes the burdens get to be too much and what we really need is serenity now!  

What I haven’t found helpful is, If there is anything I can do, just call me and let me know.  Not only do we have the duty to see our children through another day, but now you’ve just given us an assignment.  Far more helpful than the hypothetical If has been when people voluntarily showed up to help without having to be asked.  We have one dear lady from church who periodically says, “I’ll be over tomorrow to help with laundry.”  But she doesn’t just do laundry, she also cleans the dishes, feeds the kids, mops the floor, washes and waxes the car, does our taxes... the list goes on.

All parents, whether they have special-needs children or not, need to remind themselves what it means to be a couple, romantically involved with one another.  Even if just for a few hours in the middle of the day to sit across from one another at Starbucks, what Evangeline and I really crave is a break.

Finally, there are all the other things people do to support us from afar, even if it doesn’t directly impact our family.  Evangeline has sisters who have sat their own children down and explained Autism to Matthew’s cousins, hoping they will understand him a little better and be able to relate to other special-needs children in their own communities.  My younger sister donates her time and energy to a local fund-raiser (shameless plug for Project iAm), raising money and awareness for Autism in Toledo.  And that’s only a few of those who have done whatever they could even from afar.  Parents, siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles and countless friends have all done things that, even if they haven’t directly benefited us, are nevertheless far more meaningful than suggesting there is no such thing as normal.  

Again, I’m not presuming to speak for the entire community of parents of special-needs kids.  These are simply things Evangeline and I have found helpful, contrasting with those we haven’t.  Maybe some special-needs parents actually like hearing, “Someday you’ll miss this.”  If you miss it so much, you are free to take my kids to your house so I can have an uninterrupted nap.

Items carefully lined up are a very common sight in our home

Interesting Stuff About Matt Man: Echolali-huh?

Echolalia is one of the fun new words that has entered our vocabulary in the recent past. Merriam-Webster defines it as “The often pathological repetition of what is said by other people as if echoing them.”  Of course, an echo happens when you 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 to an exponential degree.  For the longest time, this is how Matt-Man talked, and still 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 we speak to him, our words bounce right back.

In general, this is how all people learn to talk.  No one learns language in a vacuum.  We all learn by hearing, making sense of what we hear, and then appropriating those words, repeating what we've heard.  Evangeline and I were always in competition with one another trying to get our kids to say Mama or Dada first.  We did this by saying Mama or Dada repeatedly until they could mimic what we said.  

Our 8-year old, of course, takes full advantage of this, teaching his baby brother words like poop, toot, and vomit.  And if the public schools today are anything like they were in my day, our kids will soon be bringing home a whole new colorful French vocabulary. 

While all children learn to talk by repeating what others say, children like Matt-Man who are verbal are prone to echo to an obsessive degree.  At one point, 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.”

“Hey, you need to go potty.”

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 is hard to come by for children like Matt-Man.

Hard to come by, but the amazing thing is that while they are prone to Echolalia, they have an ability to adapt their mimicking speech to the context they are in.  Much of Matthew’s speech is still imitation, but increasingly his repetition either answers a question or informs us about something that happened in his day.  

One day when he was about 4, on the car ride home from school Matthew said, “We’re going to take a walk.”  The next day it was, “You can’t have M&Ms until you do your independent work.”  And the next day was something different.  When we talked to his teacher, she said, “That’s how he’s telling you about his day.” 

By repeating verbatim "We're going to take a walk," he was telling us that on that day, he and his classmates went on a walk.  And the next day, he was telling us that his work was rewarded by M&Ms.  He still does this.  Periodically, he gets off the bus and tells us, “You need to go think.”  His teacher has a time-out chair in the classroom where students who make a bad choice have to go and think about what they’ve done.  “You need to go think,” is Matthew’s way of tattling on himself!

Other verbal children with Autism do something similar.  I met a woman whose brother (in his 20s) loves movies and has memorized movie lines.   That is how he communicates.  If he is asked a direct question, he quotes The Dark Knight as a way of answering the question.  Beyond being a clinical example of Echolalia, this is his way of adapting his language in a way that can communicate with others.

All of us learn the same way: hearing, making sense of what was heard, and making those words our own.  Children like Matt-Man do this to an excessive degree.  At first glance, it seems like Echolalia is senseless babbling, but it is simply their way of communicating.  These children are impressively skilled at being able to adapt their speech into a form of active and direct communication with others.  It isn’t that they can’t communicate, but they have learned to use their language skills in a way that makes sense to them.  Now all we have to do is learn their language.

Hope

This week went so much better than the entire last month.  Keep those prayers for Matt-man coming.  The tantrums that have been our multiple-times-per-day frustration were almost non-existent.  He was happy and giggly most days actually.  At least 4 times in the past few days he actually told us exactly what was wrong instead of melting down.  I have been completely blown away.  That boy never ceases to surprise and amaze me!  I really hope this trend continues.  I'm clinging to the hope that as time goes on the good days will really start to outweigh the bad days.

Matt-man, 5 yrs old. Photo copyright of Portrait Innovations.

Musings from Mom on Mother's Day Weekend

Life has been clipping along at a pretty steady pace lately.  We've fallen into the routine of 25 hrs of ABA therapy plus an hour of speech and OT every week.  Matt is making slow steady progress.  He occasionally has his setbacks, but overall he is doing amazing.

One of the biggest life changers for us has been that we no longer have to clean up his poop and pee multiple times every single day.  Forcing him to wear underwear and use the toilet is finally paying off. He still needs prompts to remind him to go, but he is so close to being completely potty-trained at last!  I can't even begin to express how proud I am of my little guy for this major accomplishment.  Many of the children with his syndrome really struggle with toilet training.

Growth Hormone therapy has been one of the best decisions we ever made on Matt's behalf.  He turned from a sluggish child to an energetic one literally overnight.  This has carried over into his response to therapy as well.  He is able to focus better and for longer periods of time.  When I get home from work he actually runs to meet me at the door and hug me.  I had resigned myself to the fact that I would probably never get that type of a greeting from Matt-man.  My heart overflows with joy and thankfulness each time I see him running to me with open arms.  What an incredible blessing to this mother's heart.  It has taken 4 1/2 years.  He is also physically growing taller from the Growth Hormone.  He grew as much in the past 3 months as he had grown in the entire year previously!  It is a huge relief to see his growth curve turn around.  He is not fazed by the daily shots, and non-medical dad has taken on the responsibility of giving him his injections every other week.  I'm proud of them both.

We are tossing around the possibility of integrating Matt-man into a typical preschool part-time this fall to prepare him for kindergarten next year.  If we do, he will have one of his behavioral therapists with him to guide him.  I hope this will work out.  I'd love to see him integrating more with neurotypical children.

Speaking of integration, Matt-man is on his first ever tee-ball team!!  He is on a team with his 6 year old brother, Nate, and many of Nate's classmates.  They are all very protective of Matt-man and extremely helpful.  He has a lot of difficulty with the mechanics of fielding, throwing, and hitting the ball, but that kid sure loves to run the bases.  He has a look of pure joy whenever he gets to run with his very unique gait.  I think it puts a smile on everyone's face to see him running with all of his might and a grin on his face!

The biggest thing on my mind this weekend in regards to Matt-man is that he is happy.  He works so much harder than the rest of us just to do the activities of daily life which causes some frustration, but for the most part he is smiling and giggling as he goes through his day.  He loves his brother and sister more than anything else in the world.  He loves to sing and bang on the piano.  He loves his sign language videos.  He loves our chronically misbehaving beagle, Lucy.  He adores a good dirt pile full of dump trucks.  He doesn't seem to worry at all about what others think about him.  He loves to wrestle with dad and get tickled to pieces.  He begs daily for a "nice, warm bath" with his siblings before bed.  Perhaps my favorite thing about him is that he loves to curl up on my lap and read book after book after book.

I wish life was easier for Matt-man and that he didn't have some of the medical issues (such as the growth hormone deficiency, recurrent ear infections, hypotonia, feeding difficulties) and sensory processing issues that come with his syndrome, but I am conflicted on whether I would ever want him to be fully "cured".  So many of the things that we have come to love about him are intrinsically tied in with the 15q24 microdeletion syndrome.  He just wouldn't be our same little Matt-man without these traits.

Pray that he would continue to improve on his toileting and communication skills and his other activities of daily living; pray that God would continue to give us patience and understanding as we deal with all of our children each day; and pray that God would continue to use Matt-man to make a positive difference in the lives of all of those around him in his own unique way.

Matt-man, age 4 1/2 yrs

Happy Autism Awareness Month!

Today is the last day of April, which seems to have been “National Awareness Month”.  Folks were encouraged to wear blue and green on April 19th to recognize Organ Donation.  It was dubbed “Child Abuse Prevention Month” as well.  Additionally, it was “Jazz Appreciation Month” according to Toledo’s 88.3 WXTS - Real Jazz For Those Who Feel Jazz!  

It is also “Autism Awareness” month.  While I think organ donation, child-abuse prevention and Jazz appreciation are all causes worthy of your attention, I have a particular vested interest in Autism, which is also worthy of your attention.  In keeping with the “awareness” theme of April, I would like to make you “aware” of some things.

My son, Matt-Man, was diagnosed as Autistic in December of 2011

My son, Matt-Man, was also diagnosed with a rare genetic syndrome called “15 q 24 Microdeletion Syndrome.”  If I may bore you with some genetics, everyone is born with 23 pairs of chromosomes.  Those pairs are numbered.  On Matthew’s Chromosome 15, he is missing 9 genes (they have been “micro-deleted”) on the “q” arm of the chromosome.  It is not likely that 15 q 24 causes Autism, but neither are the two mutually exclusive.  Among other medical conditions (growth-hormone deficiency, 15 q 24 Microdeletion Syndrome, and those lady-slaying handsome blue eyes) Matt Man is also Autistic.  

A very ugly misconception regarding Autistic kids is that they are stupid.  More than a few times in the last few months I have had different people (all of whom I suspect had good intentions) tell me, “Did you know Matthew can talk?”  This usually comes after they have babysat him for an hour or so, having only previously unconfirmed misconceptions about what he is capable of.  

The sarcastic adolescent buried deep inside me wants to make a smart-aleck comment like, “Are you kidding me?  He only grunts and burps when he’s at home.  It’s a Festivus Miracle!”  The short-tempered Irish guy inside wants to throw a brick and say, “I know he can!  What!  Do you think he’s stupid!?  I’ll show you stupid!!!”  Yet, the polite pastor inside of me, remembering what it was like to be unaware of an Autistic kid’s potential, quietly says, “Yup, he sure can!”

Truth is, he is incredibly smart.  One of the reasons I don’t get ugly when people are genuinely surprised at his intelligence is because sometimes he takes us by surprise too.  He has an impeccable memory.  Quite often, we will hear him singing a song that we didn’t teach him, only to find out it is a song he has only heard once.  I also have a feeling he has perfect-pitch—he is quite a remarkable singer.  He is an adept problem-solver and also very preceptive.  

Another ugly misconception regarding Autistic kids is that they are unemotional, or that they have no feelings.  Indeed, he may be oblivious to social and emotional cues of others, but he does have feelings.  He knows what he likes and he knows what he hates.  He likes Tonka trucks, bacon, Chick-Fil-A, and gets excited when he sees his teachers and friends from school.  He loves piano, but he doesn’t like dad playing piano when he wants it all to himself (he has often pushed me off the piano bench saying, “Daddy, do you want to leave?”).  He doesn’t get excited by some of the same kinds of things that excite other kids, but he loves what he loves, hates what he hates, and is passionate about many things.

Whereas most people might be able to tell if someone else is sad or angry simply by reading facial expressions, such non-verbal cues might be completely missed by Matthew.  However, he does understand that crying and tears equal “bad”, and when he hears his sister crying, nobody has more empathy than our son.  He is usually the first to her side, saying, “Audrey, are you okay?”  He is also quick with hug and a kiss to her forehead to make her all better.  On the other end of emotions, he loves to laugh and he loves to make others laugh too.  Our little comedian will do something that his siblings think is funny and will do it again and again until someone inevitably pees their pants.  

Matthew is still a kid like other kids.  He loves cars and trains.  He loves his trike.  He especially likes to ride his trike at full speed, crashing into our car.  He likes sitting on our laps with a favorite book.  He loves “Good Night Moon” and still to this day laughs hysterically when he gets to the part, “Good night, nobody!”  Like other kids, he loves junk food and hates vegetables (and as his parents, we don’t let him off the hook until he eats his vegetables too).  He loves the playground: running, sliding, swinging, climbing, falling, and getting dirty.  And like other kids, he often throws a temper-tantrum when it’s time for bed.  

He has grown exceptionally well over the last year, but so have we.  For instance, it is futile to attempt to get him excited about some things he genuinely doesn’t care about.  If I find something interesting, I can tell my neuro-typical 6-year old, “Hey, come look at this!” and usually he finds it interesting too.  I cannot do that with Matt-Man.  If I find something interesting and tell him, “Hey, come check this out!” he might come, but loses interest very quickly.  Instead, we have learned that instead of him joining us in the things we find interesting, we need to join him.  

For instance, he gets lost in cars, driving them in circles atop the ottoman in the living room.  Nothing we do can divert his attention away from those cars.  However, he loves it if we also grab a car and join him on the ottoman and ask, “Where are we driving?”  Then we can say, “Hey, let’s drive to the grocery store,” and on hands and knees, as we drive our cars to the kitchen, he will follow us and help “pick up” imaginary groceries from the fridge.  Then it’s off to the bank so he can get a sucker!

If you know an Autistic kid (like mine), I wouldn’t recommend trying to divert their attention from the things they love.  Instead, join them in those things, and try to expand those things a little at a time.  If the kid (like Matt-Man) likes driving a Hot Wheels “to school,” “go to school” with him, and then encourage him to “drive to the bank”, or to race.  

And if you know an Autistic kid, let him or her play with your kids.  We have had stellar therapists providing wonderful programs for Matthew’s continual development, but they work much better when Matthew is modeling neuro-typical peers, seeing what they do and copying it, hearing what they say and repeating it.  Matthew’s progress explodes when he is able to model other kids, and those other kids benefit too from being able to accept and interact with kids who are very different from them.  

Matthew is different, there is no hiding that.  But he is also very smart, very funny, very kind, very sweet, and has as much potential to succeed in life as any other kid.  Even with all the challenges afforded to us by Autism, 15 q 24 Microdeletion Syndrome, Growth Hormone Deficiency, and those lady-slaying handsome blue eyes, our family is better off in every conceivable way because God gave us Matthew.  And so with that, you have just been made “aware.”

Happy Autism Awareness Month!

Growth Hormone Update after 2 Weeks

Well, we have survived the first 2 weeks of Matt's growth hormone injections.  They are going surprisingly well!  He seems completely unfazed by the shots, and hasn't cried a single tear over them.  This is a huge relief.

I did not expect to see any effects of the shots this quickly, so I was blown away by what we did see. Matt-man finally has energy!!  It's almost like he's coming out of this chronically tired, unfocused, foggy state.  He is way more active at home and a lot more focused when you interact with him or help him work on little tasks.  He actually came running to the door to greet me when I got home last night from work.  He never does that!  He has also been talking and laughing more than usual the past couple weeks.  Matt-man genuinely seems happier.

I am so hopeful that Matt-man's new energy levels will help him make even greater strides in his development and learning.  It must have been extremely difficult to spend so many hours in therapy each week with being tired all the time.

Most people think that growth hormone injections just make a child grow taller.  I had a great discussion with an endocrine nurse this week, and she told me that it is actually very common for parents to report massive increases in their child's energy levels with growth hormone shots.  I hope things continue to go this well!!

Hanging in there

The last few months have been a whirlwind.  Some days we feel like we are barely keeping our heads above water.  Day to day life gets so overwhelming at times with 3 kids (an extremely high energy 6 year old, an autistic 4 year old in the midst of potty-training, and a full-fledged toddler who likes to climb everything).

Since Matt's diagnosis of 15q24 microdeletion syndrome, he has undergone a lot of expensive testing.  The good news is that his brain, spinal cord, and heart all appear to be structurally normal.  The bad news is that his insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) and thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) are low.  We have an appointment with a pediatric endocrinologist next week to discuss what comes next.  We've already been told that he will have to undergo a workup in the hospital for growth hormone deficiency.  From what I've read about this process, it will not be a fun day for Matt-man :(

All parents of special needs children understand the financial strain medical and therapy bills can take on a family.  I did have to start working full-time 3 1/2 months ago and am grateful to finally have good health insurance as a result.  With our old insurance we had met our very high deductible pretty early in the year, but were still paying hundreds extra each month in co-insurance for Matt's various therapies and medical bills. Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) therapy is one thing that will not be covered by our new plan, but the state of Ohio is working toward insurance reform, and there is a chance that ABA therapy coverage could become mandatory within the year.  We are keeping our fingers crossed for this to happen!!

In terms of Matt's overall progress in therapy, we seem to be taking 2 steps forward and 1 step backward.  If we look back to where he was a year ago, he has made incredible progress, but it is easy to forget this on a day to day basis because the older he gets the more obvious the difference between Matt and his neurotypical peers becomes.  

Today I took him with me to get an oil change for our vehicle.  He spent the entire time making guttural noises from his throat, climbing on the furniture, doing headstands, and at times just writhing like he wanted to crawl out of his skin.  He then proceeded to lay face down in the middle of the waiting room and started to lick the floor.  I felt embarrassed for him and wanted to lie to protect him from being thought poorly of when someone else in the room asked me how old he was.  

I feel sad for Matt when I think about how he is perceived by the neurotypical world in which he lives.  I don't want anybody thinking poorly of my little Matt-Man.  He is so smart and charming and a true sweetheart.  What the other people in the waiting room didn't understand is that Matt hears fluorescent lights.  When he is in a place with a lot of them (like today), we've noticed that he consistently goes into sensory overload and has no idea how to cope and drown the lights out.  In these environments, he has a hard time even understanding his name when I call him.  I'm sure he needed his noise-cancelling headphones and to be body-brushed from head to toe, but I had failed to bring his body brush or his headphones.  I'm also torn over the idea of body-brushing in public.  When we got away from the lights and into the van in the parking lot, he was his old giggly charming self again.

I feel blessed to be Matt-Man's mommy.  I do hope that life gets easier for him and that I get better at teaching him to cope with difficult situations.  He has a long road ahead with daily therapy, a world that doesn't "get" him, and now the possibility of daily injections of growth hormone.  Through it all, he loves to laugh and be a clown.  He brings joy to all who have taken the time to get to know him.  Thank you, God, for our little boy.

Matt, 4 years old
Photo courtesy of  Remember When Photography by Jamie Jahns

“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.