Mondays By Mums - Decisions

Its been a great weekend, less tantrums and tears, more fun. On the Sunday we made the decision to get William a new bike. He has had this tiddly plastic toddler thing for years, and is very fond of it.
But at nearly 5, he's ready for something a bit more substantial. I explained to the guy at the bike shop what we were looking for and explained a little about Williams difficulties. I was looking really for a trike to give William stability, but there were none made up for him to try which was a shame. While we were chatting though, we noticed that William was enjoying mooching around, sitting on the balance bikes and then finally nosying at the bigger bikes with stabilisers. OK so maybe he doesn't need a trike after all! We went through the different bikes with him, talking about the colours, to see if he showed any interest in a particular style. He didn't, but seemed drawn to this silver bike with white and black wheels.

It seemed like that was 'the one' and it came home with us that day :)

I guess sometimes as a parent you kind of think you know what's best for your kids, and in William's case because he doesn't really talk and can go for long periods without interacting, we are used to making decisions for him. But on this occasion he's shown us that yes, he is capable of making some of those decisions. He DID choose his own bike and he DID choose what milkshake he wanted on the way home with his McDonalds. Ok sometimes he'll completely ignore you and won't give you a response when you ask him something, but perhaps I need to take that as his answer. If there is no answer, he maybe doesn't want it in the first place.

Although William has pretty poor speech skills, he really can show in other ways what he wants and doesn't want. Its almost like learning a different language when you have a child that doesn't talk, its really hard and frustrating to get through to them some days, but if you try hard enough to see the signs, they are there. Talking is so overrated anyway :)