![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mom-gene.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/IMG_3653.jpg?resize=388%2C291\")
Deep thoughts.<\/p><\/div>\n
That was it. That was the dream. But I woke up euphoric and then told Jody over breakfast the next day with all the zeal of a prophet. I\u2019d had a vision. Jody was non-committal. Charlie continued to eat his yogurt without protest, which I decided to take as silent consent that he would indeed follow the path of the dream. And then six weeks passed and we plus the insurance company paid up and the Tobii arrived. Beyond carrying the sealed box into our bedroom out of the prying hands of the twins, I did not touch it. It remained at the foot of our bed until Monday morning when I carted it off to school to be programmed by his speech therapist. It already held too much import. I was afraid to jinx us before we even began.<\/p>\n
But I needn\u2019t have worried. After assigning response times and pictures per page and page per level of learning, he was off. He had entire conversations with his therapist. He introduced himself to strangers in the hall touring the school: \u201cHi, my name is Charlie. This is my device I use to speak.\u201d And if he noticed a kid crying in his class, he\u2019d access the appropriate pictures and words and in his new Tobii voice, would say: \u201cThat boy is sad.\u201d Yes. Yes, Charlie. Thank you for noticing and thank you for telling us.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mom-gene.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/IMG_3395.jpg?resize=363%2C272\")
Getting to know his new voice.<\/p><\/div>\n
Except he doesn\u2019t tell me<\/em>. Whenever we try to work on the Tobii together it ends in a very expensive piece of equipment getting flung towards the floor. Don\u2019t worry, I\u2019m so on edge the process that my reflexes are catlike. Tobii has never touched ground. Maybe there\u2019s too much weight there. He senses my jittery excitement and retreats. Maybe it\u2019s because we already have our unspoken language that I know best of all so he doesn\u2019t want to try with me. Maybe it\u2019s because I have a ridiculous cartoon vision of full conversations floating in a bubble above my head and he sees it and digs in his heels. No mom. I will not fulfill your dreams. You can\u2019t make me. I\u2019m five. Deal with it.<\/em><\/p>\n Whatever the reason, my son is not speaking to me. Not out loud anyway. I\u2019m taking my frustration out on the chicken over dinner and the sheets that become a Gordian knot in the dryer. And then I\u2019m trying again. I\u2019ll keep trying. Because heaven help me if my son talks to everybody but me.<\/p>\n We will get there, he and I. We will find a way to use his voice so that we can bring our silent understandings out into the open. So that I can ask him how his day was and he can type it and speak it and we will nod to each other over the coffee table. \u201cI have a dream\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Save<\/span><\/p>\n Save<\/span><\/p>\n Save<\/span><\/p>\n Save<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Alternative title: Pre-teen drama from a five-year old. After we maneuvered the highways and byways and concrete jungle of the hospital for Charlie\u2019s speech evaluation, I had a dream. And I don\u2019t mean the figurative, Martin Luther King Jr., \u201cI have a dream.\u201d I mean the literal, went to sleep that night and entered some form of R.E.M. state that led me to a vision. It was a picture of the future. It wasn\u2019t sci-fi …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2096,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[11,26],"tags":[55,54,187,15,64,186],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mom-gene.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/microphone-1209816_1920-1-e1492691011951.jpg?fit=1920%2C1022&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8ca5p-xE","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mom-gene.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2086"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mom-gene.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mom-gene.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mom-gene.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mom-gene.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2086"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/mom-gene.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2086\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2436,"href":"https:\/\/mom-gene.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2086\/revisions\/2436"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mom-gene.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mom-gene.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mom-gene.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mom-gene.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Have you found that other people are better at getting your kids to “perform” than you are?<\/strong><\/h2>\n