Pot Head

The other night Leo burst into the kitchen with something to say. This has been happening more and more at our house, and it’s exciting, truly. Speech has always been Leo’s biggest delay. There’s no doubt that he understands everything (and has for a long time). But his ability to communicate his needs, or perhaps, more accurately, my ability to interpret those needs, is another story.

In other words, it looks like a big old game of charades at our house a lot of the time with Leo doing lots of hand gestures and pantomiming. Sometimes, a sentence becomes a whole physical routine. And I have to say, Leo is quite the little actor. Much of the time, he does a fantastic job of getting his point across through body and sign language (always attempting to vocalize too).

Back to the other night. Leo was very excited about the apples (sitting in a large bowl on our kitchen table from last weekend’s apple picking extravaganza). He started talking about apples (I understand that word--it's clear as a bell), apple seeds (which he is studying at school—this much I learned at Monday's Back-to-School Night). But then Leo started in on “pots.” As in, the pot on the stove that was cooking macaroni.

“Apple! Pot!” he exclaimed over and over until I had a headache. And then another phrase that I just Could. Not. Understand:"Daw-dee-Apuh-Dee." Or something close to that. He stomped his feet, not in frustration but in determination, and attempted the phrase again. Still nothing.

I feel bad admitting this, but it’s sometimes a lot of work to try to figure out what Leo is saying. It can be exhausting. At the end of a long day? The last thing I want to do is play charades. Then again, I remind myself how exhausting it must be for people to not be able to understand you fifty percent of the time, poor guy. That's when I get over myself and patiently go back in for another round of charades.

But it makes me consider how easy it is to take for granted something as simple as speech. I am still fascinated and floored by how early Ellie was able to communicate her wants, needs and most of all: her thoughts. It never ceases to amaze me that I find myself having (relatively) complex conversations with a three year old. It makes me think of a wonderful essay I read a while back (it's definitely worth checking out), a darker variation on "Welcome to Holland:" "Have a Nice Trip," by Jill Cornfield. She compares communicating with her typical son vs. her son with autism:

"I never knew how simple a child's illness could be until my younger son got into bed with me late one night, hot and crying. "My ear hurts!" he moaned. He had Motrin; we went back to sleep; we went straight to the doctor in the morning and said, "He says his ear hurts."

“Apple! Pot!” A pause. "Daw-dee-Apuh-Dee!"

Still, nothing registered for me.

And then, some synapse in my small brain clicked and for some reason, an old school, cartoon image of Johnny Appleseed (who IS Johnny Appleseed anyway and why is he so dang famous and perhaps most importantly, why does he have a pot on his head?) popped into my mind.

I looked at the pot and the apples and Leo and finally said to him hopefully:

“Johnny Appleseed?”

Leo’s face lit up into an ecstatic grin.

“Yes Mommy!” And then he went in for The Hug. He was jubilant. I got it.

Yesterday morning I emailed Leo’s teacher about another matter and gave her an abbreviated version of that story, because I'm a nerd that way and I thought she might appreciate it. Here’s how she responded:

"Yes we did learn about Johnny Appleseed and the story I read showed that he carried his cooking pot on his head. Leo called him a "pot head" and we couldn't stop laughing (though of course the students didn't know why we were laughing so much)."

Aww, my little Pot Head.