The Oppressive Mean: when your baby stays a baby longer than average

My two year old son, Alex, doesn't talk. Or to be more specific, he doesn't say anything that we can distinguish as an English word. I was concerned about it for a while. But then again, for the first year I was concerned about every developmental milestone. For that first year, I dutifully checked my "What to Expect the First Year" every time my son turned a month older. I also signed up for babycenter.com's weekly emails, which gives developmental markers by the week.

Smile, talk, and sing to your child. Tell him what you're doing. Point out things and tell him what they are. Babies respond to the sing-songy inflection of baby talk. Give your child a massage or skin-on-skin contact to promote bonding. Give him at least 10 minutes of tummy time a day. Etc. Etc. Etc.

A lot of the advice created an inner battle. What if I didn't talk to him enough? What if my voice isn't stimulating enough? Maybe I’m not giving him enough physical affection. What if I'm not providing enough visual stimulation? Are his toys colorful enough? Does he have enough toys, or the right toys? I felt ridiculous and uncomfortable doing skin-on-skin contact --especially in the middle of the hot California summer. I didn't want to worry about any of it, and when I really thought of it all it sounded silly. And yet . . . what if the advice is right, what if by not following all the professional advice my son ended up developmentally behind all the other children? It would be MY FAULT! I was caught between the professional books that made me feel like I was completely responsible for my child’s physical and mental development, and a more common sense knowledge that my son was going to be just who God wants him to be –no matter what.

Parenting has changed a bit since the days my parents were children. I'm pretty sure that my grandparents didn't waste a single moment worrying about bonding, providing adequate stimulation, or developmental milestones. They had children without over-thinking the job, like people have been doing for generations, and they probably weren’t concerned about much more than discipline and obedience. And from what my mom tells me the standards for disciple were different. My sweet old Grandmother would have CPS knocking on her door if she practiced her style of parenting in these modern times. But civilization and child development specialists have come a long way since then. My parents survived numerous spankings, a war, struggled to make it in a new country, worked and saved, invested well and started up their own successful business --but imagine how much more they could have accomplished if their parents had Baby Einstein DVDs and all the right developmental toys!

So, to get to the point, the other day I took Alex in for an evaluation so that a team of specialists could determine if he's a candidate for speech therapy. They have their tests. "Here is a collection of pictures: Where is the dog? Where is the cat? Who is brushing their teeth? Which boy is eating?" They watched him play. They watched him stack blocks and string beads. I was actually surprised that he did as well as he did. There were some things I had never quizzed him on, and wasn't even sure if I had exposed him to, that he understood.

"Alex, you are a very interesting child," said one woman. She pointed out that Alex tended to space out every so often. "How often does he do that?" I was asked.

"I didn't know he was doing anything unusual," I said. I thought about it. "Sometimes when I ask him to point out body parts or animals, he knows what everything is and performs very well. But then I ask him again, and he points everything wrong, or he gets fixated on one part." He did this while being tested, too. He performed well, and then suddenly got fixated on a favorite object like a phone or picture of a car. But he loves phones and cars.

"I see so many children, and spacing out like that is very unusual," said another woman. "The only other time I've seen a child do that it turned out the boy was having seizures."

"How often does that happen?" another woman asked.

"I don't know. I didn't even know he was doing anything unusual?"

The woman persisted: "How often do you think he does that in a day or week?" She had a pen held above a piece of paper, ready to mark my answer.

I paused. I was getting impatient, but didn't want to show it. How did they expect me to answer the question. Alex may be delayed in some ways, but to me he's perfectly normal. In some way I felt it wasn't just my son's development that was being judged, but my parenting. And my own mental and physical abilities. I probably spaced out more than a few times during that whole meeting. I couldn't even remember what the names of these five women were. I considered my childhood, and I don’t think I was that different from Alex, even though I did start talking early. But I was shy, calm, nonathletic, and probably more self-conscious than the average child. Perhaps I’m not normal.

"I know that in quite a few ways my son has been a few months behind the average. But how am I supposed to know that he's spacing out? If he is, it isn't that obvious to me." Now I wondered what they were thinking of me. Perhaps the young woman was writing in her notes: "Mother shows little awareness that her son is abnormal."

I was advised to keep an eye on him, keep a log to mark how often he spaces out in a day. And then I should talk to his pediatrician. His pediatrician is a no-nonsense Indian doctor, who I already know is going to think this is all nonsense and a waste of time.

I talked to the evaluators about Alex’s development in his first year. How he didn’t crawl until he was able to cruise, which was at about 11 months. Up until about 8 months, he could sit still in one place and play contently.

“He didn’t crawl at that age? But how did he get around?”

“What do you mean?”

“How did he get from one side of the room to the other, if he didn’t crawl? Did he scootch on his butt or roll?” I didn’t know how to answer her. Apparently this woman could not comprehend the idea of a baby that sat in one place for any period of time. Or else she couldn’t believe that an 8 month old baby existed that didn’t have a desire to go places.

The woman recommended I try to get Alex to crawl more. “I’m a big believer that crawling works both sides of the brain in a unique way.”

By the time my husband got home that night, I was tired. I told him about all that had happened. We watched Alex and played with him, and still couldn’t see any unusual spacing out. We played a game where I asked him what certain animals do. “What does a gorilla do?” He beat on his chest. “What does a snake do?” He made a hissing sound. “What does a lion do?” He made a roaring sound and came at me with his hands. I paused, put my finger to my chin, and tried to think of another animal. Then Alex did something I had never seen him do before. He put his index finger up to his chin, rolled his eyes up, and said “Ummm.” He bust up laughing. He kept repeating this gesture and then laughing.

I looked at my husband. “What is he doing?” And then I realized what it was. My son may not be imitating English words that me and my husband say, but he was imitating odd gestures and sounds –and he thought they were very funny. Both me and my husband frequently say “umm” between thoughts. And I had to have been doing it several times while thinking of animals for him to imitate. He probably doesn’t think like most kids, but he’s incredibly funny.

After playing our game, Alex started jumping around . . . and then he started crawling. “Look honey,” I said to my husband. “Alex is working both sides of his brain!” It was just another child development activity that I instantly put away in my mental file marked “Ridiculous and Over-Rated.”

Explaining the Title

Blogger pressed me to come up with a title for my blog. So after thinking about it for a minute, I decided on the fuel and pastry line. I recently read through my old journals, and it's from a dream I had about ten years ago. It went like this:

I was walking through some store. I went outside and looking southward saw a huge tidal wave looming in the distance. I pointed this out to people, and no one was alarmed. They all just went about their business, even though they were about to be swallowed up by a huge mass of water. I got in my car and drove north, to my parents farm. While I neared their home, the tidal wave was getting so close I could feel the mists of water. My parents were sitting watching TV, and like everyone else didn't seem very concerned that a tidal wave was coming. They were just going about their usual business right up to the end. I considered staying with them, but after some time said, "If you don't mind I'm going to take the car and try to out-run the tidal wave." They gave me their blessings, and off I went. I drove a little ways, and realized I needed some gas (actually diesel, it was a wonderful white '78 Mercedes). I stopped at a little rural gas station. I had $7. I went in to pay for the fuel, and saw that they had some delicious chocolate pastries (not cheap donuts, but fresh buttery croissants). So I bought $5 worth of fuel and a chocolate pastry. (This was about 10 years ago, so $5 did buy a bit more fuel than it does these days.) As I drove off again, I was perfectly happy. I didn't know how long I'd be able to outrun the tidal wave, but I was happy to be driving and to have however much extra time that gave me. And the chocolate pastry was an unexpected pleasure that I was thankful for.