This afternoon was both enlightening and heartbreaking for me.

Older Boy and I met with his tutor this afternoon. She had him answer a few questions to get a feel for his language skills and then she had him build with legos while the two of us talked.

She spent a lot of time reviewing his IEP and neuro-psychological evaluations. Her analysis surprised me. According to the reports Older Boy likely doesn't really understand spoken language. She said what likely is happening is that he is listening to the inflection in my voice and knows that I am asking a question. He always answers "no". He then waits for my reaction and then keeps or changes his answer based on that. She also suggested he probably has a pat answer for questions with certain words in them. This makes sense to me, because anytime I ask him about dinner he says he wants french toast. She suspects that at some point in time he figured out this is an appropriate answer to the question.

He is very low on the language cognitive scale....very low. She suggested that our home might be a lot more peaceful if we used picture cards for communication, because he scores high on visual cues.

I am frustrated that it took nine weeks for someone to tell me this, but even more frustrated that no one has ever known it before me.

It made me realize that I need to show him more grace. That is a tough pill to swallow. He hasn't been understanding me and I have been getting frustrated with him, because I thought he was being purposefully defiant. It is amazing how different it feels with just a little bit of perspective.

I hope things can get better....I really do. Now at least maybe we can have the right tools and learn to work with them.