As well as my son's fascination with running water, his unerring desire to arrange his plastic bricks into colours and not much else, and his need to take all the DVD boxes from the bookcase and line them up like a pathway to somewhere, he did not speak much. In fact hardly at all. He knew some words. His first word was 'cat', which he said when he was only ten months. He said it a lot. I know he understood us; I could just sense it. But he seemed to have no desire to answer questions, or answer to his name for that matter. I was beginning to think we had chosen the wrong name for him. 

He was happy, there was no doubt about that. When we went on adventures we had a great time, but I did think it a little odd that we never really spoke to each other. In fact so much so I used to have dreams in which I was talking to him. We wouldn't say anything of any great importance in those dreams, just chatting like any father and son would. And always when I woke the thought of doing it in real life was tantalizing.

I suppose the most upsetting aspect of his behaviour at that time was when he would lash out. It was not very often, but it was always a shock .This behaviour would follow a bout of frustration on his part when, for example, he was not able to hear the full theme tune to Eastenders. Or my self or my ex would accidentally put his carefully placed plastic bricks out of his sequence (a hard thing to rectify). My only response was to hug him tightly and send him all the love I could muster.This always did calm him down, and happily he grew out of the behaviour. He still has his moments but no where near as pronounced ...