Severely Delayed

These are words you never want to hear. About the package you have been waiting for, about your plane, about home repair or other construction projects, but definitely not about your children. And, yet, we have. If you know me or my son, you know that we have been struggling with my son not speaking. He is 26 months old now, and has around 10 words. Less that he uses frequently. Even less that he speaks spontaneously.

I have scoured the internet and books about ways to improve his speech. I have read hundreds of Pinterest pages that guarantee that my child will start talking. We have read hundreds and hundreds of books to him over and over again. I keep a running dialogue on what we do during a day and include him in most of my conversations. I am the annoying person that is describing what I am doing all day to my child. "Now, we will head over to the meat section. Now, we will buy some bread. Do you like bread? I like bread." I do the weird speech patterns they suggest that make me feel like a weirdo and make him look at me like a super weirdo. And, yet, I have failed.

I know what you are thinking, of course I haven't failed. Kids all mature at different rates and he will surely catch up. Of course I know this, in my head. But, in my heart, I certainly feel like I have failed in a way. I am a type-A personality. I try to excel at everything I do. And, right now, that is being a stay-at-home mom. And, part of that job is getting your child to meet milestones. To roll, crawl, walk, talk, run, jump, color, write, etc, etc. And, clearly I have failed at getting him to meet this milestone.

He is tricky one, my kiddo. "Mama" was his second word but then got dropped because "Mooo" became cooler. And, you know, you can't have two "m" words. Every once in awhile, he will throw me a "maaa" because he likes to keep me on my toes. And, a few days ago, he threw out "nipple." You can probably tell we are still nursing. We tried to go through our early intervention program and he didn't quality 6 months ago because he understood too many words. They wanted to give him some time to catch up. But, he didn't and we have been paying out of pocket for speech therapy for 3 months. Oh, that's right, our insurance is nice enough to count it towards our deductible. Thanks. We just applied again a few weeks ago, and it looks like he is finally going to qualify and we can actually get some help without going broke.

I sure hope that he decides talking is a good thing. Just think, he could ask for what he wants instead of pointing randomly and whining while I list out everything that could possibly be in his line of sight. No more games of charades while he points around and we have to guess what he means (although I bet my husband and I could be charade champions at this point). And, I know there are times that he feels like we aren't paying attention to him when in actuality it is that we can't figure out what he means. I hope this doesn't delay him for school or for life. I hope that he catches up and can actually interact with his friends (who now often ignore him when they realize that he won't talk). But, most of all, I hope that one day, he will look up at me again and say "mama." That would make all the weirdness, and doctors appointments, and speech therapy, and money worth it. That would make it all worth it.