I caught up to them quickly. I grabbed them both toward me. Thorin tried wrestling away to continue their walk. Walt looked at me as if he were saying, “Hey, where were you?”
“You’re too young to leave the house alone,” I explained to Thorin.
“Not lone,” he smiled, pointing to Walt.
“You have to have a human with you.”
Later, after deconstructing the situation with Ward, we discovered he’d left the backdoor unlocked when he left for the store, and unbeknownst to us, Thorin’s physical strength was such that he now could open the door. We also realized he must have let Coco out the previous week. In addition, I had been engrossed in my work. Although Thorin was in the next room, he was unsupervised for several minutes, which immediately made me realize how children fall down wells. I was beside myself thinking about what could have happened. Getting hit by a car was at the top of the list.
“Thorin is getting stronger, that’s a good thing. And, Walt is a good dog,” Ward pointed out.
I wrote about that incident on the blog as well. Ward heard from another party, “Kari needs to be more careful! That was dangerous.” Everybody likes to give me parenting advice.
Aside from Thorin developing muscle tone and strength, he was promoted at school from the Caterpillar Room to the Rainbow Room. I thought it was my duty to prepare him for the transition to the new classroom, which was right next door to his old classroom—not in another school or on Mars.
“There’s no reason to be nervous about the Rainbow Room or the new teachers,” I said to Thorin as I set down his juice. Oh, boy! I was the nervous one!
Thorin looked at me wide-eyed, then he covered his ears.
“No, no, no, no . . .”
Ward overheard us from the bathroom then leaned out.
“Stop talking! You’re freaking him out!” he whispered.
“Who wants ice cream for breakfast?” I offered.
The distraction was enough to get Thorin back on track. Ward entered stage right, and before sitting down, he gave me the raised eyebrow look. After our ice cream breakfast, I was able to hold it together until we arrived at school.
As I walked with Thorin to the new classroom, I told him, “Oh, my, you’re going to have fun today!” But I couldn’t just say it once; I repeated it down the hallway. By the time we got to the doorway, he clung to me refusing to go into the classroom. I looked to the new teacher.
“What do you suggest?”
“Leave quickly,” she said in a very deadpan voice, her eyes hooded.
I didn’t understand why I had behaved like that until I talked to Patty at work.
“What are you really afraid of?” she asked me.
“I don’t know.”
“I do. The Caterpillars were divided up. Some went to the Butterfly Room, and the others went to the Rainbow Room. You asked what the difference was and you didn’t feel like you got a straight answer, right?”
“Right,” I replied tightly.
“What do you think the difference is?” she asked sympathetically.
Sighing I said, “I think the Rainbow Room is not as challenging. I think they’re holding Thorin back.”
Patty shook her head. “He doesn’t get to become a butterfly.”
I bit my lip. “Right.”
I think some staff members thought we pushed Thorin, and Ward and I thought some of them had low expectations for him. Other staff never interfered at all. Several months earlier, Thorin was at a standstill with talking, and he was ignoring many instructions. The speech therapist saw it as part of his speech deficiencies and distractibility issues. I talked to Dr. Peggy, his pediatrician, and she sent us to an ear, nose, and throat doctor. Thorin needed tubes in his ear, and after a hearing test, the doctor determined Thorin was likely having difficulty hearing clearly from even a few feet away. It was also discovered Thorin had permanent, mild, bilateral hearing loss. The doctor confirmed that Thorin’s poor hearing could stall his speech development and account for not following directions. The speech therapist was appropriately embarrassed and apologetic, and she referred all the children on her caseload for hearing tests.
Once his tubes were in, his speech gains were apparent to us but not as readily to the speech therapist. At home, I was secretly—unbeknownst to Thorin—writing down what he was saying. The school agreed to do the same, but the notebook was often blank. At home, he used a combination of signing and talking. He was saying things, such as “I want more, please”; “I don’t want to”; “Don’t want it”; “Go outside now”; “Mommy help me”; “Taking dogs out”; and “More waffles, please.”
A few times, he would make observations that felt thrilling. Pointing to the stars on his pillowcase, he said the word “stars” then pointed to the ceiling and said the phrase “stars in the sky.” And, during a walk, Thorin heard a bird tweeting above us in a tree. He pointed up and said, “Birdy! Birdy in tree. Hi! Birdy!”
When I told the speech therapist, she was not as impressed.
“Imagine all the thoughts he must have he can’t express,” I said.
No response. She just looked at me quizzically.
She then informed me Thorin couldn’t follow one- and two-step tasks. I knew that wasn’t true. I had no problem with him following through on three-step directions, like “Thorin, get your shoes and sweater and meet me at the door.” I asked her for an example.
“I asked him to get my pencil from the shelf, and he couldn’t do
