Names

Mr N recently reached one of his social skills goals at school so we met to do an amendment to his IEP. His new goal involves using the names of people he knows, he says "mommy, daddy, sissy, grandma, Gabby" but he's never called our cat by name and he refers to everyone else as "him". I mentioned Mr N not calling our cat by name but calling him "kitty cat", he's always called him that. At some point I mentioned our cat's name is Elephant which is probably why he refuses to call a cat "Elephant".

Yesterday, Elephant came up the stairs to tease Gabby when I referred to him by name to which Mr N replied "kitty cat not elephant". Clearly this is not something he'll understand for quite some time, but does explain why he refuses to use Elephant's name.

Last night at dinner I gave the kids their food and Mr N said "I need a spoon", I asked "do you mean a fork", since they were eating noodles. He said "yes I need a fork". He then proceeded to use the fork, for the first time. Ever. Correctly. Like he'd been doing it his whole life.

Today it was beautiful out, I took Mr N to the park while hanging out with a couple of friends while their mom volunteered at the school for a bit. A classmate of his was also there and another child that I'd never seen before but as soon as Mr N saw him he said "oh hey you're back" so I asked Mr N if he knew the kid and he said yes, the kid referred to Mr N by name, so apparently they know each other. I'm guessing he just goes in for therapy at Mr N's school but doesn't attend the preschool with him.

After playing in the park we arrived home to see the guy still working on filling in the hole he had dug in the intersection by our house,  using a backhoe. Mr N was quite excited to see it, so we pulled up a piece of sidewalk near where he was working and watched for a while. He finished using the equipment then got out to get a shovel to get some dirt and rocks off of the curb which was simply amazing to Mr N. The man must have noticed his excitement and talked to Mr N for a few minutes, he was all smiles. The man said "what's your name? my name is Ryan". Mr N was tickled, he gave his name then turned to me and said "his name is Ryan". So the work he's been doing in class to use people's names must really be helping. We watched until it was time to pick sissy up from school.

Once we got home from school we got the bicycles out of the garage, E took off down the sidewalk showing she'd only gained confidence, speed and strength since her last adventure on a bike. Mr N was just as excited to try his out, until he remembered there were pedals. He began to cry as he only wanted to use his feet to walk the bike around but the pedals were in the way so he couldn't. I put his feet on the pedals, told him he was a big boy and could pedal now. It wasn't long before he was pedaling down the sidewalk all by himself. I was blown away. I could NOT believe he was able to do it so quickly after struggling so much last summer and being so frustrated when he started out.

I still am overwhelmed with emotions when he speaks in full sentences, when he says things like "I sure do" when he could just say "yes". Just watching him think and speak blows my mind. At one point I thought, if he can just communicate enough to have his basic needs then we wouldn't have to worry so much. Then the other day we had the most amazing conversation. He was sitting in my lap when he said "I don't want to go in a volcano, because then I'd be dead" then went on to talk about many volcano related things and how he didn't want any of his family in a volcano. So we scratched Mount Saint Helens off of our vacation list.  But seriously, just listening to him talk about random things is so incredible.

His teachers are very impressed with his progress in the last year, they can't believe how far he's come in just a few short months. They said he leads the class, when the teachers give a direction he's the first one to do it then all of the other kids follow his lead.

Here is a little conversation from the car ride to school last week. We saw two sand trucks with snow plows, I explained that they plow the snow and put sand on hills.

E: wow those guys are really nice to do that
N: those aren't guys, they are trucks
E: I'm talking about the guys inside that drive the trucks, they are super nice

A few minutes later we dropped sissy off at school, I gave her a hug and kiss then got back in the car.

N: did you kiss sissy?
Me: yes
N: that is so nice, I want you to kiss me at school

I could not be more proud of my son.