I want to say that we suspect R also has Apraxia
His desire to communicate is very high – particularly for the things he wants and likes – So for example if the Baby Bumble Bee video is on – he will drag me in front of the TV and when they show the image of Pizza he will look at me with such keen expectation on his face and do a happy dance when I say out the word - “Pizza”
And this is literally all day!
The use of PECS honestly has been just great in whetting his appetite to communicate. Thank you everybody who encouraged me to use PECS
Numbers which are his special love – I know he is just so keen to say them – and he knows them all and he can count things etc. like if I ask him “how many teddy bears are there “– he will touch them one by one and then hold up the right number of fingers – but if he is holding the symbol “1” and uttering something – it will sounds TOTALLY different like “aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah”. I also sometimes hear him whispering “papa” so many times in a day. The other day he said the word “bubble” but did not say it again
Then reading another person’s post here about how their child never graduated beyond the infant nipples “on the bottle – That was R – he also started solids at 14 months almost .
Starting solids was a HUGE struggle and even today he will not eat any vegetable – I still feed him dinner by hand – which is usually some kind of spicy chicken rice veggies stir – fry – which I STILL puree and he is 3 years and 2 months old .
Suddenly it just clicked in my head and I felt that its not just his lack of desire to talk but that he Cant!
We asked his pre-school and his SLP said that makes sense – I love his Pre-school and also his teacher but I really hate that they did not tell us earlier .
It seems the more challenges we overcome the more they come up. But surprisingly my feelings over this latest development are not down and dejected. I am actually very happy that we found something that we can work on and I am VERY grateful that this thought clicked.
I am just glad that we can develop a gameplan to help R do something that I know he really wants to
Sorry for the long post but I did want to write this in case this is the situation some other parent is dealing with but not knowing why – it may not simply be the case lack of symbolic understanding but also a case of mouth muscles not working right and disability in motor planning – all the sounds together to make the word