Scribblings

Since June...Part 1

Now I finally feel I can talk about what’s been going on all these months.

When we first began to visit with Tomas again over a year ago, we were kind of concerned that he wasn’t talking. He also was very reserved with us but I thought that was from the long separation. After all, he’d been through a lot emotionally and although I was hurt that he didn’t seem to remember our closeness from before I tried to understand.

The talking thing…that’s something else. Tomas had frequent ear infections during the time he lived away from us. Linda told us the doctor said his ears were filled with fluid and that’s why he couldn’t talk…because he couldn’t hear. Well, I have a nephew who had a lot of ear infections like that as a toddler and it’s true the hearing becomes impaired. Sean had tubes placed into his ears—what about tubes for Tomas? I guess they couldn’t do that until the infections cleared up and this just dragged on and on and on throughout the winter and into the spring.

Now T was over 2 years old and could not communicate with us. He would look at what he wanted and we’d try and guess what it was. If we didn’t guess right he’d become frustrated and start to tantrum. He would have some mighty tantrums, too, throwing himself against the wall and onto the floor. Now, I would have thought he would try to gesture or point to what he wanted or grab our hands but he seemed to avoid any other attempt to communicate with him. Meantime we were hearing some horror stories about what might be happening at the dad’s house and we were very worried about that.

By the time Linda brought T to live with us, he’d had tubes placed into his ears and the fluid drained away. Still…no words forthcoming, no attempts to communicate and although he could be very loving and affectionate he was also very withdrawn, rigid in his play and routines, and seemingly distrustful. I began to think, if it’s not his hearing that is keeping him from speaking obviously there’s something else going on. Could it be autism?

During this time, there was no contact with the dad. I wanted to call him but was nervous about it because of the way Linda had described him…that he hated us and wanted nothing to do with us. She said he never called her to see how his son was doing and so I wondered if he cared what was going on? Still, I often wondered what he thought about his son’s reluctance to communicate.

Over the summer, as Tomas became more used to us he became more outwardly friendly although he was still very reserved and sometimes unemotional. It was like he was wearing blinders sometimes or deaf/blind to what was going on. Communication wasn’t much better but the intensity of the tantrums decreased...

I contacted early childhood intervention programs and most were unable to act without Linda calling to make the initial request. However, I did finally get in touch with a program at a hospital that could take intake information from me. They still needed Linda to call to send an evaluation team so when she got home from work I gave her the phone and the phone number and she called.