He's Got This

The past week or two has sucked for Little Bug and for us.  His behavior hit a low point, and it took a lot out of us all as we tried to crawl back to balance.  Luckily we managed to isolate a couple of the trigger factors and modifying those things helped Little Bug a ton in being able to regulate himself.  That makes me nearly sob with relief because as hard as it is for us to deal with, you can see the frustration and helplessness in his eyes as he loses control. He hates these periods more than any of us.

But I realized today that one of the factors I hadn't considered was definitely at play; a developmental growth spurt.

Little Bug is a plateau-er in his development.  He takes a long time to build up to a new stage in development, and then sits there for a long time until he just leaps up to the next level.  I can imagine that would take a lot of of a little mind and body.

But last week my son could only get the end letters of the ABCs down, could count to 3 and then again from 7-10, and had only a couple songs that he could sing all the way through on his own.  He could focus long enough to match five colored circles to the five colored squares only with significant help/prodding/forcing.  These feats took him a very long time to achieve, and I was so proud of him.

Tonight he can count to 10 confidently without skipping a number, he can sing the entire ABC song by himself without any help (although he hums through some of the hard-to-pronounce letters, but I know it's in his head), he sang not one, not two, but our entire five song bedtime routine on his own without help (including a song in Korean), and his new favorite game is a color matching folder with 12 colored squares that he rocks the lamination off.

Proud?  Appa and I are practically drunk on it.  I'd have him bow, but he is slumbering peacefully and will be for the next 10 hours because he does that again now, too.

The funny thing about parenting a child with developmental special needs is that although I know I am a part of his development, I can't explain why one day he didn't have it and the next day he does.  There is rarely an "ahhh!" moment when it all just clicks for him.  For nearly a year I have spent a portion of nearly every day working on color matching with him, and it usually ends with me privately freaking out that my 4 year old is never going to be able to match colors.  And then one day, poof, he does it no big deal.  Then again, I suppose that is how most kids develop; his longer times between skills just make it seem like he is developing different than other children, when really he isn't.

He's just marching to the drum beat that works best for his mind.  Which, if it was a red drum on a small laminated square, he would now totally match to the large red square. 

No big.  He's got this.  Just like he will get the next skill and the next skill and the next.

I'm lucky, so very lucky, to get to witness this sort of development.  The lows are low when parenting a child with special needs, but holy heck, the highs are high, high, high.