He talks and talks and talks and talks and…

people understand him!

This child had so few words when he turned 4 that our assistive tech specialist gently broached the idea that Monkey might not ever talk. This was, easily, one of my biggest fears when Monkey was little. People familiar with Fragile X reassured us endlessly that it was more likely that he would eventually talk than not and that, even if he didn’t, we would find ways for him to communicate so, when faced with the question, we told them that we knew he might not and they could make other accommodations but we were not ready to give up yet.

Monkey is 7 1/2 now and he won’t stop talking. It started slowly, a few words that made his life better…more, milk, o’s, and then it started to speed up, to use a metaphor Monkey would appreciate, like a runaway train. We’ve hit some sort of critical mass this summer. Instead of new words each week or each day we’re getting new words hourly at times. The best part is that all of his speech is more intelligible these days, we aren’t the only ones who are understanding him. He spent a weekend with my parents and there were very few things he said that they didn’t understand.

As if that weren’t enough, he is now suddenly using sentences and asking questions. “What are you doing up there?” to our neighbors on their 2nd story deck (they were eating waffles.) “What’s that?” when he hears a strange noise (it was an excavator, which is a little too close to escalator for him at the moment.) He’s even combined sentences, when asked if he’d had meatballs for lunch he responded, “Yeah I did. It was great!”

Some of my favorite Monkey sayings at the moment are…

• Oh, goodness! (sometimes Oh my goodness!)
• Spuddles! Splash!
• Hold on tight!
• Go through it!
• Go for it!
• Oh, yeah!

My most favorite is  one he broke out at bedtime a couple nights ago. Every night I say the same thing to him, “Good night! I love you, see you in the morning.” to which he has been responding “Night! Morning!” … now he’s added “love you!” in there too. It totally turns Money into a spuddle…