Communication

It's still my hope to do a big "sum it all up" post about how Krassi's doing since coming home, but apparently it's not going to happen as soon as I thought. ;)

So, in the meantime, here's a little glimpse into Krassimir's world:

Krassi is holding a little stuffed Texas A&M football given to him by a friend of his.

If you bang it, it sings. ;)

Usually I'm not so into the noisy kind of toys. Children make enough noise that they don't need toys to do it for them! But I LOVE this little toy for a number of reasons. First, it comes from a pretty neat person with a neat connection to Krassi, but I also like it because of what it represents to me about where Krassi's level of understanding is.

After years of living with an essentially non-verbal Reuben, who is slowly gaining some vocabulary, I now know what it's like to live with a completely non-verbal child in Krassi. With Reuben, we had, fairly early on, a few basic signs (things that mattered to him, like cat and airplane and water), and also remember how elated I was when Reu learned to nod his head yes and no. It is amazing how much you can learn when you can ask yes/no questions and get an answer!!!

Krassi does not have that skill yet. We have yet to get any meaningful attempts at sign language, and really nothing vocally besides a general happy/sad and some degree of how much happy or sad he is. (Not to mention the fact that Bulgaria is the only country where you shake your head up and down to mean no and side to side to mean yes! But he doesn't do either one of these, so there's no confusion there.)

But, like Reuben, what Krassimir is able to understand goes much farther than what he can express. For being a child with an IQ, supposedly, of "less than 40," he's sure done a good job of picking up a second language! We've noticed his ability to respond appropriately to our comments for months, demonstrating his knowledge of labels in English for many different things and actions. When our Texas friend was here, she was speaking to him in Bulgarian (her native language as well), and at first he looked surprised to be hearing the language again, after 8 months of not much beyond our feeble attempts at it when he first came home. Once he got over his surprise, he seemed to like hearing someone speaking to him in such a friendly way in his native language. When he was given the present of the ball, she explained it to him in Bulgarian, and he immediately started trying to bang it to get it to work. No luck. So she told him in Bulgarian to bang it harder, and he did! But still no luck.

So fast forward a week or two. He's seen the other kids playing with the ball and making noises with it on many occasions. He and I are sitting in the living room, and it's near him, so I ask him, "Why don't you try banging your ball again? See if you can get it to make noise?" And he did!!

That's my smart boy. ;) You may not say much (anything!) but you understand so much, and in two languages. That's more than I can say for myself!