Loving a Silent Child

In my head, I call Camden my Silent Child. Although he is fully aware and comprehending of the world, it is still hard for him to express feelings, thoughts, anything abstract. He can tell me the color of something almost all the time (he has trouble with the color grey, who woulda thunk it?), he can tell me what something is (sometimes surprising me at his knowledge), he can count. He can even pretend. He likes to cook playdough foodstuffs, if he's wearing his fireman outfit, he'll put out fires. Last week he was in his bath, and I heard him making his bath toys talk to each other: he'd never done that before.

My Silent Child. He talks. He tells me very basic things about his day. He tells me if he wants something, what he wants. Last night he asked me something and said "pleasepleasepleaseplease" which made me laugh, because he'd never done it before.

He's further along than he was. But his progress is still happening at a snail's pace. He's four years old; strangers should be able to understand what he's saying more than half the time. I can only understand him (without him repeating what he says over and over again) about half the time. People who don't know him or don't spend very much time around him have almost no chance of understanding what he's saying. While this is hard for me, not being able to understand my child, I can only surmise how difficult and frustrating it must be for him, to not be understood. And the worst part is that there's nothing I can do about it that I'm not already doing. Reading books, playing word games, speech therapy, praying, asking the gods for assistance. My Silent Child, who is slowly finding his sounds.

I don't know why I posted about this, except that it's been running through my head for the last week though, my worry over his speech. And writing is cathartic.