Princess triplet surprised me yesterday when I realized her normal babble of "Princeeze" had actually broken into "I didn't do it, I didn't do it" in English. It took a second or two to realize that's a line from The Polar Express which she hasn't seen in a week or so. Rather than say this is an autistic behavior of random language usage, I'm choosing to believe she was actually asking to watch the movie. Does an out of context full sentence count as a child using sentences? Maybe not, but it does give me room for hope.
Hope is one thing I've really started to embrace in this land of special needs where I live and raise my kids. It's always a little different in families where there are kids with special needs and as parents we can often feel isolated (usually not in a good way). Lately I've been trying hard to switch my perspective on the toughest parts of the daily parenting experience of kids with autism (of preschoolers with autism, of triplets - 2 of whom seem to be in perpetual toddlerhood). Switching my perspective means looking at the things that drive me crazy, switching the lens, and choosing to see a benefit within the struggle itself. Suddenly this lens change, this change of perspective has brought me more into hope overall. It's also allowed me to see that as a special needs parent, I get to hugely celebrate the littlest milestones of my kids without anyone groaning. Nobody minds when we throw hopeful parties over here.
So yesterday's (and today's so far) hopeful party was all because of a break in babble, a break in babble into English.
And guess what? It doesn't matter how irritating that kid is in The Polar Express who repeatedly says, "I didn't do it." I can hear that from my Princess triplet for the next 2 days straight and be really excited about beginning speech patterns every single time.
