As most parents know, a child’s language development and ability to communicate can be a frustrating experience, but a wonderful one to witness. My wife and I still use words and phrases that my nieces used to use when they were toddlers trying to learn to communicate. In those cases it was cute, and as they developed their skills we kind of almost missed them using those old words and phrases.
Delicious Gookies |
With autistic children, communicating is the hardest part. My son, Mikey, has been learning to use various ways of communication from his wonderful teachers. The first thing they taught him was how to point to indicate when he wanted something. When he first started doing this my wife and I were incredibly amazed and thought it was the most wonderful thing in the world. It then got to the point where he pointed so well and so appropriately that we kind of took it for granted and sometimes forgot to acknowledge it.
There are so many useless things in this world that people get excited about. But, for me, every sound that comes out of my son’s mouth is priceless. My favorite song in the world right now is Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star because when we sing it Mikey fills in the words "star" and "are." So, for now, I’m totally happy to break out the gookies and raise a glass of gilk to Mikey.