Soundified

When Joey was little, he came up with phrases that made him feel happy. Very often, by the time he started repeating them, the words were lost in a pool of sound, but they made him feel better, even cracked him up. It has been a while since we have heard one of these happy scripts, where he would repeat it just for the feel of the words in his mouth, and giggle hysterically.

Today, we have two.

"Steal Olaf's nose and feed it to Sven!" he chimed at me this morning. This was a vast improvement from yesterday, when he woke up grumpy and let me have it double-barreled from the get-go. The hysterics followed. I can still hear the fuzzy edges of the words, a sort of stuffy sound that I now recognize as the apraxia- but also a cue that the meaning of the words don't matter. It's the sound, the cadence of the words, the sharp rhythm that entertains him. The words no longer go to mush; this is a Frozen reference. Where the exact phrase came from, I don't know; always before, these phrases are ones he had heard, and became enchanted with the sounds. Certainly, it is a script, but the source this exact line is lost to me. Part of me hopes he has made it up himself, heard it in his head.

Scripting has become a problem most of the time- both of word and action. Stealing items as a "joke." Repeating "grounded" over and over- referring to punishments. Negativity, self-denigration, and depression have been a running theme. Profane language has become commonplace, and trying to correct it, vain. When I hear about police using force against people simply because the people used bad language towards them, my stomach does somersaults of fear. He bolted form the house twice this past week- what if a police officer had found him in that state?

I welcome the return of soundification. To celebrate, I turned on Frozen for him this afternoon. Then I gleefully listed to him soundify and giggle for an hour.

Music. Sweet music.