His Head Was Full of Words

If you had spent any amount of time around him when he was four, you would have heard plenty of talking. He could quote Mario. He could sing the entire Thomas the Tank Engine theme song. And thanks to Kipper the Dog, he could tell you in a perfect little British accent, “By the way, that’s a toad, not a frog.”

He echoed PBS shows, commercials, cartoons, and video games from sunup to sundown. There was no shortage of words coming out of his mouth.

But none of those words were for me.

He didn’t call me Mom. He didn’t ask me for water. He didn’t come find me because he wanted to show me something. If he needed something, he screamed until I figured it out, or he grabbed my hand and pulled me toward whatever he wanted, using my body like a tool to open a door or get a toy.

That distinction is something I understand so much better now than I did then.

Having words and having language for connection are not the same thing.

At the time, I didn’t have a neat way to explain what was missing. I just knew that my son could recite entire chunks of a television show but couldn’t tell me he was thirsty. He could repeat something he had heard days before, but he couldn’t answer a simple question about what he wanted.

And as his mom, that was heartbreaking.

I wasn’t sitting around wishing for a bigger vocabulary. I wasn’t counting words because I wanted him to hit some arbitrary milestone.

I wanted to know my child.

I wanted him to call me Mom. I wanted him to tell me what he wanted instead of screaming while I desperately tried to guess. I wanted to know what he liked and what he didn’t like. I wanted to hear something funny that came from him—not from a television show he had memorized.

Mostly, I wanted some evidence that there was a bridge between his world and mine.

I remember lying in bed at night asking the questions I was almost afraid to say out loud.

• Will he ever really talk to me?
• Will he ever tell me what he’s feeling?
• Will I ever really know him?

I think this is one of the reasons we have to be careful about how we define progress with our kids.

Because it’s easy to look at something like speech and reduce it to a number. How many words does he have? How many new words did he say this month? Is he talking more?

But “more words” was never really the goal.

The goal was meaningful communication.

There is a huge difference between a child being able to produce language and a child being able to use language to participate in his own life.

• Can he tell you what he needs?
• Can he share something with you simply because he wants you to know?
• Can he answer a question without reaching for a memorized script?
• Can he tell you no?
• Can he ask for help?
• Can he bring you into something he finds interesting?
• Can he use language not just to label the world, but to connect with another person inside of it?

Those were the changes that mattered to me.

And as we started addressing what was going on underneath the behaviors and the scripting, those were the kinds of changes I began watching for.

Not just more language.

More him.

That’s difficult to quantify, but when you’re the parent, you know the difference.

 - You know the difference between hearing a phrase your child has repeated 500 times and hearing him say something you realize he came up with himself.

 - You know the difference between being dragged across the room by the hand and having your child tell you what he wants.

 - You know the difference between managing your child’s needs all day long and actually getting to know the person standing in front of you.

And I think sometimes, in our desperation to see progress, we can become so focused on the milestone that we forget to ask what we actually want that milestone to give our child.

I didn't want speech for the sake of speech. I wanted my son to have a way into the world—and a way to bring me into his.

That is still how I think about progress today. I’m less interested in whether something looks impressive on paper and much more interested in what it changes in a child’s actual life. Does it give them more independence? More ability to express themselves? More opportunities to participate? More connection with the people they love?

Because that’s the point.

And I’d love to turn that question back to you:

What would meaningful progress look like in your child’s everyday life right now?

Not what someone else says they should be doing. Not necessarily the next milestone on a checklist. Just the thing that, if it started to change, would make you think, This is making a difference in their life.

Hit reply and tell me. I read every one, and I’d really love to know.