My son made me cry…

140 days without yelling, 225 days of loving more to go!

Dear #3,

Oh I love you so. A few weeks back I wrote about a time when I snapped at you (read here), when I felt frustrated with you because you couldn’t use your words. I wrote about wanting to hear the words “I love you” come from your mouth, unprompted. I wrote about how much I love you, how much I am going to keep trying to be patient with you so that I can help you get over your speech delay.

And well, the effort is paying off. It is SO paying off. You still haven’t told me you loved me. But today you said something else, something equally if not more powerful and it made me cry.

We were driving in the car talking about Safari Animals and the following conversation unfolded:

Mommy:             Okay boys what other animals are Safari Animals?
#1:                      Lions, tigers, cheetahs!
#2:                      Um, giraffe?
#1:                      And RHINO, don’t forget Rhinos!
#3:                      Yeah. Rhinos’.  Orange Rhinos. They can’t Yell. Yelling not nice. Mommy is Orange Rhino.

Mommy (tears in both eyes, smiling from ear to ear, grinning so large it almost hurt. Grinning because he spoke an almost full sentence AND because he showed that he comprehended what the Orange Rhino is all about. He gets it people. HE GETS IT!):
That’s right Kiddo! Way to go!

#3:                          Yeah, Mommy is an Orange Rhino. You can’t yell mommy but you pick your nose.

Oh sweetheart, I don’t pick my nose, your brother is the one who does but YEAH for you. A full sentence! YEAH for us. We are both making progress. And I love you. And I love that you can now call out “Orange Rhino” to me just like your brothers when I get cranky. And I love that you are trying so hard. And mostly I love that I was losing faith this week. I was feeling disappointed in your progress, feeling like you would never catch up to your peers and feeling nervous that your speech delay would someday be a real problem for you.

And yet here you are, proving me wrong. Showing me that you are progressing on so many levels. Picking me UP.

And I couldn’t be happier. You made me want to scream from the top of the minivan with joy!

I love you kiddo,
xoxo,
Mommy Orange Rhino

*

I am amazed that hearing the phrase “Mommy is an Orange Rhino” filled me with such emotion. That it brought tears to my eyes. Who would have ever thunk it? I thought “I love you” or “Happy Birthday” or “Happy Mother’s Day” would have been the phrases to put me over. And they still might be. But Orange Rhino?

Really?

I think what did me in was realizing that he can now verbally be a part of something that the rest of our family (minus the little munchkin of course) has been sharing and doing together for 140 days. That he is now that much closer to being able to talk and engage with us more easily and more frequently. That he seems to really get how important The Orange Rhino is to me. That HE,  my son, picked me up. That he taught me to keep believing, to not give up, that progress does happen that I just have to be patient.

Every day is a new day. Every day he adds more words. He is working so hard, I need to focus on that. I need to believe that his language is developing instead of feeling disappointed that the process is slow.

Because the progress is there – I just need to look for it.

Does that last line resonate with anyone? Feeling like you are still yelling and making no progress? Or that progress is slow? Share your thoughts in the comments or in Facebook. Maybe you are making progress too? 

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3 thoughts on “My son made me cry…

  1. So awesome.  I love that your kids are helping you do this.  And I love the progress you just saw in #3.  How did you decide to do this year long challenge?  Is it somewhere on the blog?

    • Thanks! The story is somewhere on the blog…I just have to find it! Which makes me think, hmmm probably should make that more prominent, eh?!

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