In An Attempt to Reassure Myself

Everyone says, including me, that all the baby and toddler milestones will come with time. I say this all the time, and back when I went to a twice-monthly "first time moms" group for 0-12 month old babies, I said it many, many times to mothers of younger babies who were anxious about the things their kids weren't doing yet.

The B crawled a little "late", in quotes because there is no "late" for crawling. Many kids don't even crawl at all, actually. It was worrying when other 6 month olds were crawling all over the place and the B was sitting up and grinning at me, but I got over it and she crawled in her own time.

The issue now is different. What she's doing is basically refusing to pick up english words for things. Yes, she says "uh-oh" a lot, and it's clear she's using it in a particular context. She's been known to say "mama" occasionally and actually says "dada" a lot more than that. The immediate questions are this: 1) Is it because we attempted (though she didn't reliably pick up) baby signing, because a lot of people tout "speech delays" as a reason not to do it (which I still say is crap) and 2) Well, you really need to double-check for autism signs.

Now, on #1, if she is delayed because of the little amount that the signing I tried to do with her actually sunk in, I really don't care about the delay. I think the communication the signing could have afforded us would have been easily worth the delay she's experiencing now. So that's a non-issue really, but I don't think the delay has a single thing to do with signing, mostly because she seemed to view it as a cute thing that mama did but nothing that had anything to do with her.

On #2, that is, of course, the heart-stopping question that most parents of preschool aged kids don't really like to even think about. It's not the end of the world if your kid is autistic by any means, as all of the families who are living with autism could readily attest. It isn't, however, anything that a parent would choose for their kids, and I really hope they find a cure or a treatment for it one day, so that people in the autism spectrum could emerge a little bit more from their internal worlds and let us all get to know the person they truly are.

All that being said, no matter how much crazy, wonderful, exhausting, sweet interactions the B has that clearly indicate that she displays none of the other signs of being in the autism spectrum, there is part of me that can't release that last little bit of doubt. I will be able to relax so much more when she starts using words as labels for things, and when she starts to put together her two word sentences.

I have heard so many anecdotal stories about kids who refuse to talk until they've mastered sentences internally, or kids who were delayed and went on to be completely normal. I've heard and personally cited that famous story about Einstein waiting until he was 3 to speak more times than I can possibly relate to you.

Mostly, though, I think it comes down to this. That day you go to the hospital (or stay at home, or wherever you deliver your baby) and you meet your child, one of the things you are gripped by is an intense desire to learn who that little person is. What will they be, how will they act, what innate proclivities will they show? Some things are nurture, certainly, but so much of temperament and disposition, any parent will tell you, is largely innate.

I've never been a patient woman. I want sentences. I want to laugh at her silly jokes or mispronunciations the same way that she makes me laugh by playing with her toys in a funny way, or making a goofy face. I know she's in there. I have a sense of her. I'm just verbal enough, though, to really feel like I don't know her the way I will after she can talk to me. I want to converse.

The ironic part of this is this: I'm sure in a couple of months or so, maybe a half year or perhaps even a full year, I will be posting to ask all the other parents where my kid's off button is. At this point, though, I can't help looking forward to that day.