Time Keeps on Slipping Slipping Slipping...

I've talked a lot about N's pragmatic language issues, and that they are especially acute when it comes to various types of measurements; he doesn't really seem to get the difference between an inch and a foot or how many of one goes into the other, for instance. But the most obvious and frequent issue involves time. Quantities of time. Tenses of time.

"Remember when we went to the store tomorrow?" he might say.

"You mean when we went to the store yesterday?"

"Oh, right," he'll reply. "Yesterday."

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Trying to find actual real examples of what I'm talking about, though, that's harder. So when I come across one, especially one that keeps getting repeated, I'm wont to write it down, so I can use it, so I can be specific when I ask people to help us figure out how to address it.

Recently, we've been listening to Wonder on audiobook. I mentioned it before, and at some point I'll likely mention it again, because it's been this wonderful (ha!) experience for both of us. It's eliciting so much conversation, and so much emotion.

It's also eliciting a perfect example of N's issues with time.

See, we listen to the book on my iPhone; the iPod function there has a 15-seconds-back function on it; you touch a little clockwise or counterclockwise arrow with the number 15 in it, and that makes the audio skip forward or backward 15 seconds. Because we only get to listen to the book a few times a week, there are long periods in between when life gets in our way, so whenever we turn it back on, I always instruct N to hit the 15-second-back once or twice.

Lately, because my son is nothing if not a creature of habit, he's beating me to the punch when I pull out my iPhone and hand it to him to get us started while I drive.

"Should I turn it back 15 minutes?" he said the other day.

"Seconds, and yes," I said.

"Right. Seconds," he replied.

Two days later:

"I'll turn it back 15 minutes."

"15 what?" I said, prompting.

"Hours?"

"Seconds."

"Oh, right. Seconds," he said, embarrassed, dismissive.

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On the way to school the other day, when we'd been late leaving the house every morning this week (I adoreADOREadore Daylight Savings, but it sure does take me some time to catch up to the mornings), I bemoaned our tardiness.

"This isn't OK," I said. "We're so late. It's already 7:50!"

"Yeah," he said. "I'll have to remind you to leave a few minutes later tomorrow."

"Later?" I said, momentarily confused, until the coin dropped. "Do you mean earlier?"

"Oh, right. Earlier," he said.

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That "oh right"? The one that comes with each of these corrections I give him? If you were sitting there, you'd know that they are not "oh, right"s. They are, rather, "isn't that what I just said?" They are, "I'll use repeat your words so you'll leave me alone." They are, "we just aren't speaking the same language."

I can see the disconnect, but I can't see how to cross that divide. I don't know where it's rooted. In language? In something deeper, some quirky biological sense that isn't, an actual inability to know the difference between 15 seconds and 15 minutes? Somewhere else?

Is it fixable? Does it need fixing? Can it be worked around? Is it the sign of some gift instead? Am I looking at it from the wrong perspective, from my time bound world, trying to tie him down?

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When N was little, he used to talk about something happening "in a couple of whiles." I loved that turn of phrase, and I still like to use it. But, really, I think that's what time is for him. Just some whiles, all piling up in one direction or another. A couple of whiles here, a couple of whiles there. It's all the same. It's life.

What Normal Sounds Like

"Hey, Dad, do you want to see what I put in my white-and-orange sack?"

"Mommy, I want to read that book called 'The Fire Cat' again."

"We're having Mrs. Nelson for a substitute tomorrow."

Not more than two months ago, maybe less, those sentences would have read as follows:

"Hey, Dad, do you want to see what I put in that thing? That thing! That thing! There! That thing THERE!" [A tantrum follows.]

"Mommy, I want to read that book again. That book with the thing? The animal thing? NO, not THAT BOOK! The OTHER BOOK! NO NOT THAT ONE!" [A tantrum follows.]

"We're having a substitute yesterday. That teacher I like? That girl? The one we had next month? That OTHER GIRL! THE ONE WE HAD ANOTHER DAY!" [A tantrum follows.]

I have no idea what has changed. He started speech therapy at around the time that Baroy and I started REALLY noticing a huge difference in his language skills, but I mean literally started. Like had his first or second sessions. No way the speech therapist deserves all the credit for this one. Though, hey, if it means this period of enhanced speech development keeps up, then I'll give it to her.

It's amazing, though, how much harder it is to notice 'normal' than it is to notice 'disordered.' It really just sort of dawned on us, slowly, that we were starting to understand him more often, without interpretation, without context. These examples above stood out because of how exceptional they are in their specificity. I mean, before, he wouldn't have even been able to express that he was talking about what he put in a 'sack,' much less think to describe the COLOR of the sack, to make it easier for the person listening to him to know what he's talking about. And the fact that he's not only getting temporal references right, but he remembered the name of a substitute teacher he had...that's remarkable, considering that he has regularly had trouble recalling the names of two of the three women we see EVERY WEEK, who he has known since he was born, who he adores, and at whose homes he has slept over many times.

I am, I must say, absolutely flabbergasted. And thrilled. And excited to see what comes next.

What he said when I asked him

Several of you asked me, apropos of my last post, what N said when I asked him about his ostensibly odd response to the 'favorite number' question.

Truth is, I hadn't asked him at all at first; I didn't want him to think he'd done it 'wrong' or that I was disappointed with him. But when you all pointed out the 2+6=8 thing--despite the fact that I know my kid, and I know that's not the way he thinks--I had to check to be sure. And so I went to him and asked, and it turns out you guys were about half right. Or at least meg was about half right when she said that maybe he thought your favorite number had to be between 1 and 10--except, as N explained to me, somewhat circuitously, the favorite number had to be between 1 and 20.

"Oh," I said, "so you couldn't have 26 as your favorite number, then."

"Right."

"So why did you say your favorite number was 8? How did you come up with the number 8?"

"Because I like it."

"But why? Does it have anything to do with number 26?"

"I like it because Emmy used to be 8. Before she was 9 and 10."

Yeeeeeeah. Like I said, not the way he thinks. But I will admit, it would have been really cool if you were right and I could say things like, "Well, the reason I can't understand what he's saying is because he's just TOO SMART FOR ME."

(Don't say it, you. I know you were about to.)

Pragmatics, Part III

There couldn't be a clearer example of what I am trying to talk about here than the one handed to me at Back to School Night last night.

After N's teacher had finished her shpiel, she invited us to look around at some of the work the kids have done just in these past seven days of school. On the back wall, papers were stapled to a bulletin board, each filled out by a different child in the class. The kids filled in the blanks in the following sentence: My favorite number is __ because __________.

Most of the kids had written similar statements:

"My favorite number is 6, because I am 6."

"My favorite number is 9, because my sister is 9."

"My favorite number is 20, because that is when I'm going to get married." (Hee! That one just slayed me. And, for the record, it was written by N's Loving Girl, whose mom took one look at the paper, covered her eyes with her hands, and waved me off when I came over to gently mock her. "I know, I know," she sighed. "I don't even know what to say.")

Clearly, a bunch of the kids had...well, let's say maybe they borrowed from each other. Or maybe the teacher suggested specific ideas for how to decide on your favorite number. Whatever the case, there were at least a half dozen statements on the order of "My favorite number is 12 because I was born on July 12" and "My favorite number is 3 because I was born on April 3."

And then there was N's: "My favorite number is 8," he wrote, "because I was born on January 26."

What the...?

The thing is, it would be hilarious if it weren't so messed up. Or maybe it would be messed up if it weren't so hilarious. But whatever it is, it's a pretty clear example of what I mean when I say that sometimes he just doesn't...just CAN'T...make sense.

[Also at Back to School Night was a one-on-one conversation about how the teacher wants to work on getting N to stop sucking his thumb at school because she fears he's going to get teased by the other kids. More on that another time, but for now, let me just say: Iceberg? Meet tip.]

Contradictions

Green, first off, I'll NEVER complain about a comment. I want comments. Hell, I LUST after comments. Nothing would make me happier than to get 73 bajillion comments on a single post, like some people I know [coughJanecough]. I'd be happy even if some of them were to piss me off. Which yours DID NOT. So, not to worry. Promise.

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Kristen mentioned a possible language processing disorder being behind what I've been calling N's pragmatics problem. I started looking at that possibility, and hit the same old wall that I always hit when talking about N: The kid is an enormous mass of contradictions.

The initial reason we started worrying about him was his social skills (or complete lack thereof), and so we had his school district evaluate him, when he was almost 4.5 years old, to see if he might qualify for any kind of services. On the Batelle Developmental Inventory, he scored in the FIRST PERCENTILE on peer interaction. You can't score any lower than that. BUT, he got a 75th percentile score on adult interaction, putting his overall personal-social percentile at 30, which is in the normal range, thus allowing the school district to say no to services.

All of that is water under the bridge, and he did ultimately get some social skills therapy, and he'd probably score a lot better in peer interaction if tested today, though it's clearly still an issue. But my point is: contradiction. HUGE contradiction. First percentile; 75th percentile. It's not just that there's a difference in these different skills; that's to be expected. It's that the difference is so HUGE.

Same thing with his motor skills. This is a kid whose gross motor skills are, at least in some areas, not just fine, but remarkable. This is the kid who could throw and catch a ball at nine months, though he couldn't roll from front to back until *18* months of age, well after he was walking and running. Bizarre. This is the kid who could hit a pitched ball at age 2. This is the kid whose golf coaches are almost literally drooling over him. And yet, this is the kid who, at 6.5, still can't draw, has a hard time coloring in the lines, and whose scissor skills are pretty poor. Contradiction? To some degree.

And so it seems to be with processing. Most everything I'm reading seems to lump language and auditory processing together. In many ways, N's auditory skills are awesome. He's never had a problem understanding what is said to him, never had a problem following instruction. I also THINK he has a fairly advanced ability to take information and generalize it or draw conclusions from it--the problem is in his ability to express those generalizations and conclusions in a way that is understandable if you weren't the one to give him the initial information and thus know where he's drawing his seemingly bizarre sentences and phrases from.

In addition, his vocabulary is quite advanced for his age, even if he can't necessarily say all the words in an understandable form.

I dunno. I'm trying to find a speech and language pathologist in our area who would be covered by our insurance, at least for an eval, as you guys all suggested, both publicly and privately. I'll bring along the posts I'm collecting, and I'll also bring along the old reports, including the one from the developmental pediatrician we saw after the school district denied services--the one who seemed to think the social issues were secondary to language issues, and whose opinion I at that time pooh-poohed. Ah, hindsight, you 20-20 darlin'.

In looking it over, two years later, I can see that the same issues I'm talking about now were in evidence then: "N does not describe his daily experiences in logical sequence in any depth without significant prompts," she wrote. "He sometimes will ignore a question and talk about something unrelated to the topic at hand. N will often retreat into speaking 6-8 different babyish voices, more so at home or in the parents' presence than at school...N also demonstrates a somewhat immature speech pattern and exhibits some frustration when he is not understood correctly..."

I would make some "the more things change the more they stay the same" comment here, except nothing has changed. So...onward.

Pragmatics, Part II

"I'm changing the channel," N says.

"Why, don't you like this show?" I ask.

"I do, but I don't like this show. I hate it a lot."

This is what I'm talking about: I do, but I don't. The repetition of "I don't like it/I hate it", by the way, doesn't mean anything. Tomorrow, he may tell me he loves this show, or that it's his favorite. But that, I think, is a more common issue: N changes his mind all the time; he's totally arbitrary. But when you contradict yourself within the same sentence...that seems to me to be something else. Something about not knowing how to say what you mean.

Pragmatics, Part I

I'm gearing up to push, this year, for someone, somewhere, to start helping N with some of his language problems. His pediatrician wrote a note to the school recommending a speech evaluation, and several of my very-learned-and-astute-in-this-arena friends have strongly suggested the same.

My concerns are that, in a school district that has ignored me at every step, his literal 'speech' issues are not serious or severe enough to warrant speech therapy or other services. But that's only if you ignore, as school districts tend to do, language (focusing only on speech) and pragmatics (focusing only on diction). Because, MAYBE, if he's in the mood to speak clearly, you can understand most of what he says...if he's reading words out of a book, say. But when he speaks on his own, half the time it's not the sounds that are the problem, it's the words. Or, rather, it's the sentences. They're mixed up and backwards. Sometimes they're outright inside out. Most of the time they require you to either know the context of what he's talking about, or to know his speech quirks...like the fact that he sometimes mixes up opposites, so that yes can literally mean no and vice versa.

But it's impossible to explain this without examples. And it's even harder to explain it to a school district or, if that doesn't work out, a private speech therapist. Which is why, a while ago, I started keeping track of some of these 'quirks' in N's language; I was making a list of solid examples that would make my concerns clearer. Except, um, I seem to have lost it. Don't ask.

For the next little while, then, I'm going to try to write them down here, because I can't lose the internet, right? (Well, I probably *can*, but I'd have to try a lot harder than I did with that yellow pad of mine.) So, if you're not interested in the weird language quirks of a 6-and-a-half-year-old about-to-enter-first-grade boy, feel free to ignore any and all future installments of this sort of thing, which I'll call Pragmatics (so I can find it more easily).

Here is the sentence that prompted me to do this tonight, right now; the one he said to me not five minutes ago:

"What time I want to brush my teeth?"

(Translation: When do I HAVE to brush my teeth? Not only is the "What time I want" part just clunky and awkward and missing the word 'do', but the 'I want' is 'wrong'; he was trying to find out if he could WAIT to brush his teeth, because he didn't want to brush them or, more specifically, to go to bed, which is what directly follows brushing. He was very much NOT saying he wanted to brush his teeth. Except, of course, that's what he DID say. And, because I knew this, I was able to just answer, "You have to brush your teeth right now." Almost anyone else would have just stared at him in bewilderment.)

So that's today's installment. To those of you still here, thanks for listening. And deciphering. And caring.