Listening with one’s eyes

Aug 7, 2011

As if our summer schedule wasn’t busy enough, we decided to throw in the Irish Festival Friday night, the Ohio State Fair on Saturday, a fundraiser at church and the final softball game of the season on Sunday.

Nathan spent a good deal of the time in his pushchair, doing a lot of people watching, both performers on stage and the general festival/fairgoers along the way. My personal highlight of the weekend was the extremes that Nathan went to communicate with me/us making sure we knew what was on his mind.

The first prime example was after we had returned from the fair. Annette’s mom and sister had come down to spend the day with us, and Nathan was enjoying having other friends to spend the day. We ordered a pizza for dinner, and it was my job to pick it up. Nathan was laying on the floor and his intuition was telling him that Dad was about to leave.

He waved his arms, frantic to get my attention. As he gained eye contact with me, he tried to point to the door. When I didn’t respond to that he rolled away from me, grabbed a shoe (as he was barefoot) waving that, trying to get me to put his shoes on him and take him with me.

Everyone in the room now knew what he wanted, we bypassed the shoes, but I carried him to the car and headed to the drive-thru window at the pizza shop. Of course, once he realized not everyone was going, he wasn’t sure he made the right decision and pointed towards the door, thinking I had forgotten about the others still inside.

Later in the night he reacted in a similar way when Annette and her mom went out for something themselves. He wasn’t sure what he wanted when half the room left and the other half stayed, but he was getting his dinner, and didn’t want to miss out on that if he left the house again.

The other incident happen after we went to church. While at conductive education, he doesn’t use his walker. While in the house or many of his other activities, he doesn’t use his walker much there either. Church was his big chance to get around on his own, and we were curious to see if he would embrace the freedom, or want to sit and hang in the walker like he’s known to do many times as well.

A few weeks ago, we raised the frame of the walker up, pulling Nathan more upright and getting in a better standing position. Today, when he got in the walker, he seemed up a little higher and his feet were not touching as well as before. He looked at me (and I at him, wondering if he would try to walk on his own or not.) He gained eye contact with me, then looked at his feet, and back at me, and just shook his head no, almost in a way to say, “I just can’t do it like this.”

I walked over to him, lowered the frame down a notch (where his feet could touch flat) and off he went. Walking like a champ, into church, down the hall to his class and into his Sunday School room.

We try to use his communication device when the situations present themselves, but there are many other times, when we just have to use what the situation presents. We’re both very proud of Nathan, wanting to communicate with us, and when, Nathan “talks” I just hope I’m able to listen to all he has to say.

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