Eye Contact is Overrated

One of the "small" issues we have with FrogBoy is that he has a hard time making eye contact. By "hard time," I mean he doesn't do it. At least not willingly. It is a battle to get him to look you when the eye when you're talking to him, and even more of a challenge to get him to look at you when he's talking to you. Like everything else, it's an autism thing.

We spend a lot of time reinforcing the "look at me" rule in our house, mainly because SuperHubby can't "hear" people if they aren't making a conscious effort to look at him while they talk. Our difficulty lies within SH's absolute need for eye contact, and FrogBoy's absolute aversion to it. He makes baby steps daily.

Another issue he has is with his speech. Obviously, he's been in speech therapy since he was 18 months old, and he has a good bit of a lisp to deal with. He also has trouble with positional words (over, under, behind, between...doesn't matter, he has no clue what any of them mean...you can say "Look under the chair" and he'll look all around the room and still not find what you're pointing out).

On top of the lisp and the positional words, speech helps him with how to respond to certain situations verbally, and how to initiate conversation. Those are all good things. The one thing it can't help him with is his jaw problem.

Froggie has a very small jaw, the tiniest teeth you've ever seen, and a pretty severe underbite. His dentist has been watching him for a couple of years now, and we know we've got two choices:

1. Braces.
2. Break his jaw and wire it shut in the right position.

Can you guess which one we're praying for?

Actually, if you guessed braces, you'd be wrong. Originally I was thinking braces would be best, because I just couldn't imagine having to explain to him that his jaw was going to be broken and wired shut; then I couldn't imagine having to go through that with him. However, my aunt pointed out that braces might actually be worse for him, considering all his sensory issues (they would drive him crazy) and his lack of good brushing skills (because of his sensory issues). I'm starting to wonder if breaking his jaw wouldn't be easier for HIM.

Of course, I'm trusting God to work it out. We are, however, getting close to when they're going to need to do something. Some kind of age thing. No matter what happens with his jaw, it won't affect his lack of eye contact or his visits to the speech therapist - but I'm realizing that it might make his face look different.

And that makes me very sad.