More About Ian

I have a huge list of chores to take care of this morning, but I’m too distracted to pick them off. Ian is on my mind.

How’s Ian doing? Well, he turned four last week. In many ways, he’s just like a typical four year old. He advanced to the Pike level in swimming. He rides his bike and fights over TV shows with his brother. He likes Happy Meals at Wendy’s and jumps around with his friends after school.

In some ways, he’s more advanced than other kids his age. Last week, we were on the subway and he read “Do Not Lean On The Door.” Well, he didn’t know the word, lean. And for a boy who only learned how to talk in the past few months, he’s fascinated by language. He dredged up an old Baby Einstein tape with its robotic announcer reciting the alphabet and common words in foreign languages. “Shalom. Bonjour,” Ian says. We also keep buying him sign language videos, because he likes them so much.

The biggest problem continues to be speech, though we’ve come a long way. He now speaks in 3 or 4 word sentences. He uses all the words correctly and even his pronunciation is good. He is getting better at answering questions. Suddenly being asked to come up with words is becoming less and less of a problem. He doesn’t run away and hide when a stranger asks him how old he is.

Ian had unhappy spells before, and we didn’t always understand why. Gradually, we figured out that the biggest problem was tight spaces with a lot of background noise. This has greatly improved. He can handle family gathering at my folks’ house just fine now, which is huge, because my loud family scares lots of normal people. Before those parties made him scream or hide in the basement.

Apparently these problems with tight, noisy spaces was also an issue at school. We just found out that until a few weeks ago, Ian wasn’t participating in group exercises or cooperating with the teacher at all. The teacher was completely unaware that Ian had basic skills like color sorting, word recognition, comprehension of words like biggest and smallest. He just was too overwhelmed to do anything but tune out or cry.

I’m furious that we weren’t told about Ian’s problems in school until last week. He has been in the program for a year and no one told us. We would have put him in a private program if we had known. I’m here fuming about his school’s dismissive and paternalistic attitude to parents and spent the morning chewing out his case manager.

But I’m also pleased as punch that little boy is overcoming his issues with sound and gaining more control over speech. I’m pleased that he spends so much of his day with the biggest smile on his face.

Since the weather has gotten nicer, Jonah and Ian and I have been wolfing down early dinners at 5:30 and then racing outside for more playtime, until we see Steve turn the corner at 6:50. Yesterday, Ian and I tossed the basketball back and forth. Jonah hit a volleyball with the big girls: Hillary, Amelia, Hannah and Hailey. Brenden and Dylan flew by on scooters. The five girls sat on the neighbor’s front steps talking about the last birthday party.

A small party on Piermont Avenue, and my little boy is right in the middle of everything. With a big smile and a skip. “Throw ball, mommy. Throw ball.”