Tenaciously ignoring the Magic Number.
Today I saw this article, with a change in numbers: Now we have until nine years, apparently. From an article in Parents.com: "The latest studies show that almost 80 percent of kids with autism now have some speech by age 9, whereas only 50 percent of these kids were talking 20 years ago." --Catherine Lord, Ph.D., director of the Center for Autism and Communication Disorders at the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor. Just a couple of years ago, I remember reading in several places that basically if he didn't have verbal speech by age six, it was all over with talking. Move on, the experts said, to augmentative communication, or sign, or whatever. Statistics say verbal is not going to happen, ever. When Dan was five, I felt like a dark door loomed ahead. I dreaded Dan's sixth birthday. It came anyway. While his verbals existed, it was like pulling teeth for one-word, very inarticulate responses. Six came and went, turned into seven. Still, nothing major hap