Communication

Speech therapy began today. I completely forgot about it until I heard the door bell ring... it can get difficult keeping up with all of B's appointments! My middle son goes to speech therapy in school, so I was able to figure out the structure of these therapy appointments. What I didn't know was how the speech therapist was going to get Braylon to even start communicating. There is only one word he says and that's "DADA", little daddy's boy!?! Besides that I usually have to guess what Braylon wants.
Communication comes in all forms: different languages, body language, sign language, even "eye language". The speech therapist started with basic forms of communication. She wanted him to reach for a toy if he wanted it, instead of grabbing the toy out of her hand. She tried to do it many times, failed many times. Examples were shown to B, but time and time again he yanked the toys from her hands and put them in his mouth. We discussed his basic understanding of simple commands, like "come here", "no".... things he doesn't respond to. The conversation continued between me and the therapist, but none occurred with Braylon.
Frustration is easy to set in and hard to get rid of. I felt myself becoming frustrated, because I want B to be able to point or wave hi and bye. But HE doesn't. Life would be so much easier if instead of biting me, he could gesture for milk. If I could hear mama and know he needed me. Who actually lives in the land of IF.... no one I think, because there will always be more "IFs" to come. This journey would be very long, lonely and disappointing, if I didn't know any better. Although I don't hear the word "Mama", I see it in B's smile when we play. Braylon's way of communicating is lacking, but when I hear a high pitched scream, I know he's talking to his brothers. I'm not sure if he just doesn't understand the word "no" or ignores it, but I think that of my older boys sometimes too! Thursday we will meet again with the speech therapist and maybe more will come from the session. I'm not sure what to expect, but I do know that we will be there for that session and we will be OUR best. All you can do is all you can do and all you can do is enough.
My plans for this blog is to continue writing as long as I need to and as long as others are inspired. My dream for this blog is that Braylon one day will read it and understand how strong he is and communicate in his own words to you that we are all strong in the Lord! God bless!

p.s. Lesson learned.... none of our communication levels are up to par. I need to work on communicating more instead of expecting others to know what I want!