9 Years.. it finally happened

Before you get as excited as I hope you are, no Alan has not consistently found his voice yet. But I know we are on the right track, it’s just a long track. However, something super special happened yesterday morning and I absolutely have to share it!

For the last couple weeks we have been working on texting through Alan’s IPad. We text me, his Dad, Nana, Papa, Aunt and Uncle. This is a huge goal of mine for him and his success in the future, texting. Texting with a purpose. Texting with functional communication. Texting to survive this life. He’s been doing it, reluctantly, if it’s functional. But if you let him script facts about landmarks, or the titles of his favorite episodes, he’s all about it. So it’s been a mix of both kinds of communication and I’m okay with not pushing it as long as he’s trying it.

This weekend we worked on requesting juice via texting. He did great but again always needed prompting to begin the text to get his need met. Saturday, I went to bed early and Al stayed up with Alley because he’s a night owl and doesn’t go to bed until about 11:00, which is way too late for this girl. But I woke up to a text from him and it said “Juice.” Followed by another text saying “The Great Sky race Rematches” which is an episode of Little Einsteins (this is where his love and fascination with landmarks began). But when I saw that “juice” texted I was elated. He did this independently, with zero prompting and was trying to get his need met. I was SO happy to see this and ran downstairs to show my husband. We both felt super guilty and bad because he didn’t text his Dad in which he could have gotten him juice at that time, however we were both so proud of him.

Alan eventually woke up, he’s a bit of a sleeper in during the mornings. When he came down, I wanted to recap his texting and explain that I was sleeping, and give him another option when that happens, like his Dad.

I sat on the couch by him and pulled out my phone. I brought up our texting thread to review it with him and explain. He was receptive and listened to me. I profusely appologized for not meeting his need at that time and then he took my phone from me. He looked me dead in the eye and typed “I love you so much” and pressed send. My. Heart. Bursted. It was so brief and quick this interaction but it felt like time stopped for those couple seconds. I just grabbed him and kissed his face about ten times because I was so overcome with emotion. I walked into the kitchen and showed my husband. He was as elated as me, ran to the room by Alan and praised him for how great he did in the text. It was such a special moment for us.

I know this is not him verbally speaking, but my god he wrote his feelings accurately, without any sort of prompting and he meant it. It was the very first time he told me he loved me in 9 years…. 9 fricken years. I’ve been floating on cloud nine since and even if it’s something that is few and far between, I got it, he loves me. 9 years…. Finally. And I love him so much too.

Never give up Mamas, never ever. Try everything you can. Our boy is a rockstar.

With Grace,

This Autism Mama