Stop talking about it and do it.

I've noticed lately that I've talked a lot about cleaning the house and doing taxes. I've told Cindy probably 5 times that I was going to work on taxes. I started telling her this back in late February.

It's April and I still haven't started. Why not?

Yesterday I read a blog post about how people who announce their intentions are less likely to make them happen.*

I agree. This advice does fly in the face of self-help authors who suggest that you should announce your plans to everyone you know. Supposedly by doing this you obligate yourself to actually competing your projects.

But, in actuality, the theory says by announcing your plans you're tricking your brain into thinking that you've already taken the first step. You get a tiny sense of accomplishment. Therefore you have no motivation to actually complete them.

So keep your plans quiet. Instead of spending energy announcing the plans, just do them.

___

* Reference: “Symbolic Self-Completion” (1982) by Peter Gollwitzer

"I don't want to get your hopes up..."

We recently had a community speech therapist come over to work with Jake. There had been a year waiting list.

She came over for an hour one day, then an hour the next day, doing an "evaluation" of his "communication".

When she was finished and we asked her how he was doing and when he might talk. She said, "I don't want to get your hopes up but someday he might make word approximations."

Trust me, you didn't get our hopes up.

Then she said she wanted us to enroll him in a program that would build a facilitated communication device - something with pictures he could show us that would tell us what he wanted.

We said, "We want him to talk." We declined her advice.

My son can read. He’s two years old and has Down syndrome.

On Jake’s two year birthday we were showing him some reading cue cards and I showed him the word “Hi”. He waved. I showed him a bunch of other words, then back to hi. He waved again.

Then I showed him the word “clap”. And he clapped. Today, I showed him the word “nose” and he touched his nose.

He’s two and has Down syndrome. We’ve been signing to him since he was about 6 months old. He stared signing back when he was around a year old. Now he knows more than 80 signs.

We just started the reading thing a few days ago. He loves it. Gets very excited. His default answer to most of the cue cards is “Mom, mom, mom.”

When he reads “clap”, we praise him and clap. He gets excited and starts clapping for the next few cue cards. Very cute.

It’s hard to describe how amazing it is to see your son learn. Especially when your son has challenges and obstacles most people never have to face.