Pass the Bacon

For months we've been waiting for Andrew to talk.  As he approached his second birthday with only about three words in his vocabulary, I grew anxious.  It wasn't that he couldn't communicate.  It's that he didn’t feel that he had a reason to talk.  If he wanted something, he would just go get it.  If he couldn’t get it, he would drag me to what he wanted.  Plus, after parenting two other boys, I've gotten pretty darn good at knowing how their minds work. We managed just fine, yet I worried, as mothers do.

A boy of few words

When I discussed his speech delay with the pediatrician, she was also concerned.  She asked me if I talk to him and if I read to him.  Instead of kicking her in the head,  I choked back the "No, I lock him in the closet all day" reply and told her that I did, indeed, read to him AND talk to him.  I even said it nicely, even though I was insulted by her questions.  I know she was just doing her job.  I explained to her that he could understand everything that I said and often followed directions better than his older brothers.  Then she told me that I was probably just too good at anticipating his needs and wants.  Either way, it seemed that his speech delay was my fault.  Yay me!  

Chris, however, had a different theory.  He said that Andrew would talk when he was ready – when he had something he wanted to say. 

The wait-and-see philosophy just wasn't good enough for me, though.  I, after all, was single-handedly  crippling my child's speech development.  Over the next few months, I worked even harder to encourage Andrew to talk.  We spent hours pouring over books, pointing at the pictures and saying the words.  I even tried insisting that he tell me with words what he wanted, and sometimes that didn't end in hysteria.  Short of manually manipulating his tongue, I didn't know what else could be done for the little guy.  And really, would that have worked anyway?

Slowly, Andrew started to say more and more.  Feeling a bit like Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady, I was tempted to make him practice voice warm ups and tongue twisters, but after a less than enthusiastic response to "The Rain in Spain," I abandoned my dreams of a musical breakthrough.  Nonetheless, Andrew's vocabulary grew daily.  He just didn’t have much to say. 

Until last week.

 

We were having BLTs for dinner, one of the boys' favorite meals.  It's not the crispy lettuce or the juicy tomatoes or the divine deliciousness of the blend of all three flavors swathed in mayonnaise and stuffed between two perfectly toasted slices of bread that appeals to them.  They only love the crispy, salty, fatty goodness of bacon, but who doesn’t?  If you watch the Food Network, you will learn that everything tastes better with bacon.  Got a hot dog-- wrap it in bacon!  Dates-- better with bacon!  Even asparagus can benefit from bacon.  Makes my mouth water just thinking about it.  Man, I'm hungry... Where was I?  Oh yes.  Dinner. 

There were only two pieces of bacon left, and two boys were eyeballing them and licking their chops like hungry wolves.  The little dog danced under the table, hoping some crumbs might fall his way.  I asked the question anyway, already knowing the answer.  "Who wants this bacon?"  Predictably, Benjy and Jacob began screaming "I do! I do! I do!"  As I was about to give them each a piece, a small voice roared above their din: 

"I WANT BACON!" 

Just like that, Andrew bellowed out his first sentence.  It was crisp.  It was clear.  It was triumphant. 

“I want bacon,”  he repeated to our stunned silence.  I handed it over willingly and debated whether to fry that boy up another pound.

I should have known all along that all Andrew needed to talk was the right motivation.  After all, he only learned to walk so he could ride the teacups at Sea World.  Little Rascal.  I could have been dangling bacon in front of him all along. 

In the end, Chris was right.  Andrew did talk when he was ready--when he had something to say.  Nobody tell Chris I said he was right, okay?