There was a time when Eric and I frequently found ourselves completely mystified by something Caleb was trying to say. We knew he was trying to say something, as opposed to making random sounds, because he would very deliberately repeat the sounds several times while watching us closely. If we couldn’t figure it out he would simply move on. It broke our hearts.
Over time though he would slowly perfect the sounds until, suddenly, the light bulbs would pop on and we would finally figure it out! Once we figured it out we could repeat the correct pronunciation and he would quickly clean up the sounds so anyone could understand him.
As his speech got clearer and clearer those incidents diminished. There has been one that has been plaguing us for ages though. It has been making us a little crazy. A few days ago we finally decoded the word…or rather, phrase.
At the beginning it sounded an awful lot like…”$hithead.” I know, I know…given our pottymouths that shouldn’t have been confusing us but…that’s one of a very few that we don’t use! Over a long period he kept working on this one until it sounded like…”Is she dead?” We really thought this was the answer but we were really confused about where it came from…it’s hardly a question we expected him to pick up randomly.
One day last week, C and I were watching The Penguins of Madagascar and he rewound a scene a couple times. I was distracted ((by Pinterest, natch)) and, quite frankly, he does this so much I often tune it out. So it took me a while to catch on that he was asking, “Is she dead? Is she dead?”
At that moment my focus zeroed in, often as soon as I start paying attention to the TV he will switch episodes…just to mess with me, I suspect. I needed to at least figure out the episode though so I could go back to it and FINALLY answer this question. But C took pity on me and rewound it one more time…
I burst out laughing and yelled to Eric, “I figured it out! I figured out, “Is she dead?” He was cooking dinner but stopped and immediately came to hear.
“We would never have figured this one out on our own”
I paused dramatically, it seemed appropriate after all this time wondering, “Is chivalry dead?”
That is an awful long way from $hithead, eh?
Let voice to text translate….that *always* turns out well!
It turned out well for me, I still keep cracking up over it.
I can soooooo relate to this story, Melissa! It does feel like winning the lottery! Great post!
Usually we can understand what Matt wants most of the time too and he was saying something in the car last week we just could not figure it out….and then Paige says in a very annoyed tone….he is asking about making a “list”…..his Christmas list!!! He made her be his “scribe”!! Cracked me up!! Then he asked for an envelope and wanted to go put it in the mailbox! It went south when Paige said we didn’t have any stamps!!
I can TOTALLY relate to this Melissa – we go thru the same with Nick. And when we finally figure it out – we cheer and jump up and down and laugh, and laugh, and laugh!!! It’s amazing how “complete” we feel when finally the “light goes on”!!! It’s like “ding ding ding ‘ we have a winner!!”
That is so funny. I still wonder what my parents thought of me while I wasn’t talking to them either when I was little. I think I will ask to see now that I think about it. I am happy they bought me that record player so I could learn my numbers, letters, etc to music. I liked Sesame Street too. I guess all of that got the light bulb going for me also. Fragile X can affect some in so many different ways or not much at all. Thanks for posting Melissa.