Listen To Her!

It took Kendall quite a while to find her voice. Her first “word” made its debut when she was 10 months old, and I think it was even longer before we officially declared that it had happened. She didn’t use much purposeful language until after the age of two. The summer before her third birthday she was evaluated for the special education preschool program, and as I prepared for their questions, I counted a vocabulary of 20 “words”…if I counted animal sounds. At four years old, her speech therapist helped her to master the “M” sound, and I was finally able to hear her call me Mommy. Her language exploded following her neurological disorder diagnosis and the subsequent steroid and anti-convulsant treatments, but there was a lot of ground to make up.

I can see similarities to myself in our 12-year-old’s constant chatter. My dad loves to remind me that he used to think his ears would bleed as I followed him around the house narrating my day, and my memories of family dinners include his fork tapping on the edge of my plate as a gentle nudge to wrap it up and focus on eating.

The content of her chatter is different, though. There’s a great deal of repetition, scripted language, snippets and clips from books and TV shows, and what would sound to outsiders like interaction but we know as prompts; “Do you have any pets?” really means that she wants you to ask about her pets. She is blunt and honest and unable to fabricate. It’s surprisingly refreshing that she is able to simply state “I’m done!” to end an activity and frustratingly painful to watch her struggle with desires any more complex than that.

But even if she isn’t able to clearly articulate her thoughts and feelings–like her English major mother–she’s always communicating. You just have to know how to listen to her.

She communicates through hugs and hits. Through songs and screeches. Through the faintest smile and the smallest sneer. Her silence can speak volumes, while her volume screams for silence. As her parents, we are fluent in this language, and even we are learning new vocabulary every day.

We spent more than an hour today talking (also crying and arguing) with her school team about behaviors and physical outcomes before I was able to articulate the resonating theme: “She is telling us something.” She is expressing herself in all of the ways that she knows, and some of those methods aren’t pleasant to others. But, you know what, they are valid because it seems that what she’s feeling isn’t pleasant to her. When her environment is filled with noise and chaos, she tries to take control of that situation by filling it with the sound of her own screeching. When her body feels anxious and out of control, she expresses that physical pain by pushing, grabbing, or hitting. It’s hard for those around her, but imagine what it must feel like inside her body.

What is she telling us right now? Is she struggling with transitions, the school bus, the demands of her day, an irregular schedule (thanks, Mother Nature, for your snow days and delays…), her irregular bowels, recent changes, or upcoming events? I really don’t know. But I’m listening to all of the ways she is expressing herself, and I hope that others are, too.

Kendall deserves to be heard.