This is really the only word to describe my son’s progress. Well maybe another would be divine intervention plus a little early intervention therapy…. Ok that is more than just one word but you get the point.

After a year of working with Killian, we are finally seeing the fruits of our labor. During out trip to the States at the end of June, we had started to see some changes for the better. Killi was responding well to our family and friends. He wasn’t as shy as he once was. He still wasn’t speaking much but that wasn’t to say that he wasn’t trying to communicate. His social interaction on our trip home was such an improvement, our family and friends gave us the greatest compliment we could have been given: “He acts like a normal three year old. There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with him.”

The reason he acts normal is because he has been working all day, five days a week to get to this point. Killian has accomplished more in one year than most people do in a lifetime if you think about what he has overcome to get to this point. He works all day long starting with school in the morning and therapy until the late afternoon, he arrives home in time to eat, spend some time with me and then pass out for bed time. He is working a 40 hour a week job at three years old but thank the good Lord it’s in the form of play and it doesn’t seem like real work!

Once we returned home from our visit to South Carolina, school was out for the summer but therapy was on. At therapy they started feeding him new foods at lunch time to put a stop to the picky toddler eating phase, which he didn’t fight. He now eats Thai food and for breakfast he will ask me for rice by saying “rice please?” My son, who refused to eat rice for the last year and half, is now asking to consume it when he first wakes up in the morning. What is going on here!? He will still give me a hard time with food at home but that is because I am the mom but don’t work I still hide veggies in “cake” and I do not mind at all as long as he is eating new things at therapy.

The best part of all of this is he is talking non-stop. He started saying “no” a lot which was fine since he was communicating but then “no” turned into “no way” (I guess he learned that from me…) and I was determined that my well-mannered southern boy would not say “no way” to his momma. He was going to say “no ma’am” and so I explained to him “no sir we say no ma’am” and it stuck! Everything started to stick! Anything I said as a matter of fact, so there are no more bad words coming out of my mouth because my son will repeat them quite clearly…. In addition to working on his good manners, when he would start to whine to try to get his toddler way; we can now stop him by saying “You do not talk to mommy/daddy that way. Please ask nicely and I will help you.” He will actually stop the tantrum, look at me and ask for what he wants, for example “more milk please.” In case you haven’t noticed that’s three words put together and it makes sense!

The words are just flowing. He is counting and identifying numbers with ease. We went to the zoo this weekend and he can name the animals; “zebra, giraffe, elephant, rhino has a horn on nose, baby tiger” and so on. He tries to sing the nursery songs now like Itsy Bitsy Spider, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and The Wheels on the Bus.  Anything I show him a picture of or if we have a new toy, I can say the name once and he will repeat. Once we start playing, I can go back to the toy after a while and ask “what is this?” and he will answer correctly. Tonight, we made a play-doh xylophone from a play-doh mold. He wanted to know what it was called so he pointed to it. I said “it’s a xylophone.” He repeated me perfectly and after playing a while with other shapes and animals I asked him to name all of the objects we made out of the molds. He was able to name them all with no help including xylophone!  My mind is blown! Ali told me just the other day that he is blowing his “therapy goals” out of the water with his progress!

His teacher at school told me today how she was thinking on the commute to work how amazing the difference has been. I think she has a hard time believing it is the same kid and I don’t blame her sometime I do too. She went on about how he is participating in circle time, listening to her, getting along with all the kids, doing his assignments without assistance (just simple tracing of numbers but still no help is a huge improvement) and all she could say was “thank the Lord” and I totally agree.

Every day is so new and exciting because we can’t wait to see what he will do next. Thank you for your prayers and support. We give all the glory to God for putting the right people in our lives at the right time to help our boy and our family.

GOD IS GOOD ALL OF THE TIME!