Ohmer House: Backyard. I know all kids love bubbles. And I get it. Bubbles are awesome. They float, they're shiny, they pop and they are seemingly created out of thin air. Mia's love for bubbles goes beyond that of a typical child. The excitement that uncontrollably flies from every extremity of her body. Her arms flap (crooked at the elbow while her forearms to most of the flapping), her legs stomp and the loud gasp "heee" that follows. Pure happiness comes in a 99 cent bottle. In her various forms of therapy, we often use bubbles as a reward.

When Mia makes eye contact, along with any attempt at forming a word, we blow bubbles. Mia has a severe language delay. When diagnosing Autism, the doctors dont like to say your child has severe Autism. Rather they will assess how delayed your child is in various fields. Fine motor skills, speech, gross motor skills. "Doh" Mia says as she hands me the oversized bubble wand. "Doh" means: more, please, help, go, eat, drink, out, in. It's an all purpose sound, whoever she is saying it to usually has to guess at it's meaning. I can remember when she first said "Doh" as a request. During a speech appointment, Kelly (our speech therapist) was throwing sticky balls against a white board. Kelly started "Ready, set....." and Mia finished "Doh". That was a little over a year ago. Progress is slow with speech, I've heard Dr. Temple Grandin explain that an Autistic person has trouble hearing consonants. Therefore, language can sound like "Oooo, aaaa, eee". Also given the anxiety that eye contact gives people with Autism, they usually won't spend much time watching your mouth to see how sounds are formed.

As it is right now, Mia will say "Doh", "Ma" and "Ba" with regularity. Now, thanks to those beautiful floating little orbs, she has figured out something new. "Mia, would you like more bubbles?" I ask. She responds "Ba ba".