The Sound of Silence

Max missed a few benchmarks.

As a mama, that’s a hard thing to admit.  Although I abhor competitive parenting, my heart beats with maternal pride.  Andres and I both think our sons are the most beautiful, intelligent, kind and amazing children to ever walk the planet, as I’m sure most other parents do.  I thought my blind pride would dissipate as I settled into motherhood, but it hasn’t.  Not a bit.  Daily, I watch Max and Jack with tears in my eyes and wonder how in the world I got lucky enough to be blessed with the very best best babies.

Max missed a few benchmarks.

His speech was delayed.  Although his comprehension was razor sharp from an early age, for a long time he didn’t talk.   He actively babbled away, but his language was limited to what he made up.  He communicated through pointing, grunting, body language, facial expressions and using toys to represent ideas.  He managed quite nicely.  He actually reminded me of myself in a foreign country.  My time in Japan and India made me the master of communicating through a language barrier.  I’m surprisingly good not only managing to get by, but also cultivating meaningful relationships with people with whom I share a scant vocabulary.  Although I marveled at Max’s similar ability, his slow speech troubled me.

Max’s language problem began when he was one year old.  All the development charts said he should be saying at least 12 words.  He had a wishy-washy vocabulary of two.  I know that sometimes children don’t follow developmental charts to a T, so I tried not to worry too much, thinking his physical development might be taking precendent first.  Plus, he’s a boy.  Everyone knows boys can be a bit slow developmentally.  (My former single self is very tempted to insert a man joke here, but as the mother of 2 boys, I can’t.)  When I ran into a mother from my birth class who had a son a few weeks younger than Max, I casually inquired about his speech.  Her off-handed answer that Kyle said a couple dozen words shook my confidence.  Her tone wasn’t bragging.  Her son’s budding speech was a just a natural part of their life.  She rattled off what she considered to be his unimpressive vocabulary, “mama, dada, cup, book, ball…”

My heart lurched at mama.  I hadn’t been called that yet.  It’s one thing to see that most babies say it on a chart.  But the matter-of-fact way Kyle’s mom mentioned it made me realize it was old hat for her.  Nothing special.  If Max had been saying mama at the time, I would have been shouting about it from the rooftops.  My heart was silently broken by his silence.

Max’s pediatrician wasn’t concerned about his speech delay.  She said that developmental delays are natural when a new baby is added to a family.  This was at Max’s 18-month and Jack’s 2-month check-ups.  Still, I furrowed my brow.  I know a child who had a serious delay and was in speech therapy three times a week.  I’m aware of a window for learning and I didn’t want to waste precious time if there was a problem.  Still, I followed her advice and took a wait and see approach.  Rather, wait and listen.

Silence.

But silence only from Max.  Other people started noticing his reticence and commenting.  Max is shy when meeting people and puts a comforting thumb in his mouth.  I started hearing a lot of comments that pretty much blamed me for allowing him to suck his thumb and postulations that somehow this digit in his mouth was a plug blocking his speech.  My mother-in-law told me I should coach Max, as she had coached Andres, who was also a slow talker.  I should spend my day saying things like, “This is a book.  Book.  Book.  Say, book, book, book.  Say, book.  Say, book.  This is a cup…”  All this chatter filled my head, but it was not the voice I longed to hear.

Max made progress slowly.  It seemed he spoke just enough to not go to speech therapy, but not enough to let me relax.  My heart broke on the playground when I saw him desperate to play with other kids, but unable to communicate.  A few times older kids tried to include him, but then they would turn to me and ask, “Why won’t he talk to me?”  I explained that he was still a baby and didn’t know how, but I saw them quickly move on to more exciting action, leaving Max on his silent sideline.  Crushed.

Both of us.

One day, a few months ago, the floodgates opened.  Max started speaking, not just words, but sentences.  Not just sentences, but gushing run-on sentences, too full of newly articulable ideas.  And jokes.  His sense of humor is already taking shape by saying something silly followed by, “NO!” and a wicked gleam in his eye.  Each step of our life is repeatedly narrated by him.  He’s talking about the future too, things he’s gonna do, and sharing memories I didn’t know existed, like last summer’s raspberry harvest at Nana’s house.

It is everything all at once: past, present and future given to me in one thundering waterfall of words.  I can’t get enough.  We listen at the nursery door while he talks himself to sleep at night.  He talks about trucks, books or sometimes sings Jingle Bells.  I am to-the-moon happy!  Part of me want to rename this blog, Cute Things Max Says, and flood this website with his words the way he is now flooding our lives.

Someone else is talking too.

Jack’s language has trickled in with the ease of rain.  One moment there is silence.  The next, he says,

“puppy.”

His newest word.  So sweet.  So pointless.  So freely given.  So deeply appreciated.

He lets these gems drop with a frequent randomness I guess would be considered normal.  Because his trickled words are so different from Max’s delayed watershed, I am tickled, surprised and thrilled at his brilliance.  I am also doing something bad.  Jack has developed a habit of calling for me whenever he feels the slightest negative emotion.  Sometimes it’s because Max has taken away his choo-choo.  Sometimes he’s climbed his way into a pickle.  And sometimes Dad has told him no for being naughty.  His response is to screw up his face, release two streams of tears and shout at the top of his lungs, “Mommy!  Mommy!  Mommy!”

My heart leaps at my name, and so my body follows.  Knocking over coffee, letting dinner burn, abandoning my train of thought, I rush towards the sound of my name.  I scoop Jack up in my arms and cover him with kisses.  It’s like I’m a new mother, but I know I will later pay a price cultivating his dependence on me.  Still, what can I do?  It’s finally my turn.  I waited 35 months to be called mom.  Plus nine months.  Plus three months.  Plus, well, my whole life.  I have to run.

My name has been called.