Sometimes words have no power over me.

This morning, David came to do intake as a precursor to D’s private speech therapy. David is a southern boy, as evidenced by his “ma’am” and “thank y’alls.” At first, I thought that David was going to be D’s new speech therapist, and I was pretty psyched about having a male therapist for my son. But then David said that he was an OT, and that the therapist was named Julie or Priscilla or some other very girly name. OK. So I go through D’s history with David, knowing full well that I’ll just have to go through all of it again with the therapist in a few days. Fine. So he scrolls through his list of diagnoses and notes that he doesn’t have an entry for Sotos. Or overgrowth syndromes. But he does have “other congenital anomaly.”

I chuckle. Mr. WG says, “What’s that?”

I said, “birth defect.”

David said, “Yeah, it’s just a nicer way of saying it.”

I said, “Yeah. We’re past all the nice way of saying things.”

And David said, “Well, that’s good. That’s when we can actually get work done.”

Therapy should start within a week. For D. I asked, but they don't offer concurrent services for moms.