Not afraid of Santa!

Last week we took the kids to see Santa after the Christmas parade- they all did great. I was so proud of Waylon for sitting on his lap, and he even was able to repeat "thank you" for his candy cane (with prompting.)

Waylon also was very well behaved at Caden's school program last night and I was able to snap another good picture with Santa!

Yesterday I got to sit down with Keenan, Waylon's speech teacher at ABCnD, to go over the results of his evaluations.
Of course, his evaluations compared to other four-year-olds aren't very good, (his ranking in most categories for his age group was in the 1st percentile) HOWEVER his teacher emphasized that a more accurate way to evaluate Waylon would be to compare how much progress he's made. Of course over the past year Waylon has made HUGE progress. He is preparing new goals for Waylon's speech program, because Waylon has surpassed most of the initial goals they set for him.
Just like Waylon's preschool teachers, Keenan had lots of praise for what a great kid Waylon is. He said he loves spending time with Waylon at school- he actually said Waylon is "my guy!"

We have lots of friends in the Autism Society who have children with autism. Some of them have no speech problems, and some of the parents whose children are verbal say that after lots of therapy they finally started talking. There are also some people with older children who are still non-verbal and use an electronic device to help them communicate.
With Waylon's fourth birthday coming up, I hope and pray and wonder: Will this be the year?