As per usual, you guys are helpful, and quick
He also has extremely good receptive language, and matches what you guys are describing in your kids, and not so much a serious-disability-with-spoken-language kinda situation. That's kinda what I thought before the SLPs discredited (and failed to record accurately) all my responses to their questionere which would put him anywhere above age-levels on anything.
We're also reading a LOT, and starting to spell, which is -- odd. I heard someone on the subway behind us say "Oh, it's that kid again, the one who's always reading." And, yeah, he can count a bit. His favourite number is 2, and he will go way out of his way to point to pairs and say "two!"
Ok, I'll fish for a bit more advice, though I suspect these two will mostly only draw sympathy ;):
For some of the late talkers/eary understanders... did you get a lot of really complex/specific thoughts (Languagy throughts) communicated in gesture? I got "Mom, can we go sailing" the other day, in a combo of spelling, gesture, and pictographs, which was unique in that I could understand easily and verify clearly. Often it's more complex, and harder to 'get." (I said "yes" by the way, we're going next week -- what a convienient excuse ;)) If so: did you find anything that really worked to reduce the frustration levels around non-verbal communication. (I only worked in THIS field for 5 years, it seems like I shoudl have more idea of my own)
We have to be really pretty careful how we talk around him, because he understands virtually everything that's being _said_, but lacks the life experience to quite understand what it means & how it relates to other things. He got scared about "Jidism" one night, and we eventually sorted out that we'd been talking about circumcision... oops. I think once a day, I have to sit down, take a really, really deep breath, and attempt to probe the depths of a toddler's mind for *what* he overheard that scared him. He clearly listens to the radio when I have it on, too. (He's not really a frightfull boy, really quite brave, just that the world can be a bit confusing when you're 1 and trying to sort out the middle east... from when he was tiny we used to make a joke that when he made a certain face he was trying to come up with a solution for peace in the middle east. Oops.) I don't want to stop listening to the radio... I need my fix & I want him to grow up paying attention to the news and stuff, and I don't want to stop talking about things around him (for one thing, he never sleeps, we'd have to stop talking completely)
Thanks for the hug... I was more rushed than stressed, although I am a bit stressed & confused. We've been in a long "looks normal" period, but all of a sudden, we're getting a lot of comments again, and about half of them are about how smart he is, and half are about how odd he is. Getting referred to SLP was a bit of a shock, too, since the last time DS's development did EXACTLY the same thing with another 'milestone,' I tried to get it looked at and everyone told me I was crazy
I would not be shocked if he is somewhere on the spectrum, but I would be shocked if he has any serious disability from it. There's a family tradition of being high-functioning, and he's the antithesis of the typical AS toddler... well, mostly.
Hah! I wrote too much. He's a very sweet kid. It's almost like I *like* the guy
It's aufully nice to be able to just say this stuff. I think I finish every other post here with some comment like this! I haven't even told his dad about the spelling yet (I almost didn't say it here).
-Mich
