If at first you don't succeed...

As many of you know, my little Cale is non-verbal.  He can say a few words but they are probably only recognizable to Alex or me.  He uses sign language to communicate, but again, his signs are only recognizable to a very small group of people.  When I think about this and the fact that he is almost four years old, I have a hard time wrapping my mind around the fact that he is generally an incredibly happy boy that is easy to please.  If I could only communicate with a few people and regardless of how hard or how long I tried to get people to understand me, and they just couldn't, I would probably become a bitter, sad, lonely woman.  Not my Cale, though.  He just keeps persevering and constantly has the mindset of "if at first you don't succeed, try, try again".

My mind has really been focusing on his communication lately.  Cale has been making some incredible gains in his speech, which is probably why I'm so infatuated by it.  He is starting to form sentences with his signs and becoming outrageously creative in trying to get us to understand his specific wants and feelings.  For example, he is obsessed with technology and his most recent love is a green iPod Nano that Alex and I no longer use.  We gave it to Cale to play with and ever since then he has become attached to the silly thing.  He asks to sleep with it, hold it in the car, etc..  He used to use the sign for "phone" when he wanted it but since he also likes to play with our cell phones, he realized that he wasn't being specific enough to get what he wanted when he wanted it!  Therefore he came up with  another way of asking.  During speech therapy, his teacher uses an activity with turtles to practice his vowel sounds.  With the vowel "I", there is a picture of a turtle stretching one arm straight up into the air and the goal is for Cale to mimic the turtle and say "IIIIIIIIIII" for as long as he can.  It's a silly game but it works.  Anyway, we have been practicing his vowel sounds for months and months and months because there are still a few he cannot say.  Well, we recently started noticing him sticking one arm in the air and randomly saying, "IIIIIII".  It took me a few tries to figure out what he was saying but once he paired the arm in the air with the sign for "green", I immediately knew he was asking me for the green iPod.  Another example, when we were driving to Alex's parents' house last weekend Cale kept giving us the sign for "home".  He is usually very excited to go to Grandma and Grandpa's and so we were puzzled with why he would want to stay home.  After a few tries of trying to communicate with him, he finally pointed out the car window and we realized that we had just passed Home Depot.  Still puzzled, we asked him, "Do you want to go to Home Depot?".  An instant smile flashed across his face and he signed, "yes".  

This may seem small to most of you, especially for those of you with children that can just tell you exactly what they want when they want it, but for Alex and me it has made a huge difference in how we are able to communicate with him.  He needs less prompting and I'm starting to realize more and more how very normal he truly is.  He acts, and even thinks, like a typical three year-old.  Just the other day he got mad at me for telling him that he needed to wait for something and so he marched down the hall, into his bedroom and "slammed" the door;  typical toddler behavior and let me tell you, I couldn't have been more proud. :)  

Even though Cale is very different from his peers, I'm starting to feel like life is normalizing for us.  I was trying to explain this to Alex last Sunday after coming home from church and I'm not sure I can best summarize my feelings in words, but I'll give it a shot.  I used to get embarrassed when people realized that Cale was different.  "Embarrassed" isn't the right word because I'm not embarrassed by Cale, but maybe anxious is a better term to use.  I was anxious because I never wanted people to judge him, and by taking him to restaurants, out to the mall, or to church, he would become a prime subject for judgment.  In my heart I knew that people would love him if they just gave him a chance, but unfortunately for most people with disabilities, they are never given that first chance.  I'm sure any parent would not want other people to think anything less of their child than the overflowing pride you have for them, and I certainly am no different.

I just want people to love Cale as much as I do and to realize that he truly is more normal than he is different.