Mama! Look! A White Dove

Miracles, Freedom, and Happy Fourth of July and a Merry BBQ Thanksgiving to All

I have rather a different view of miracles than most people, but firstly some sickly sweet anecdotes and a call for help.

My eldest son has now used his custom communication device to:

1. Tattle on his younger brother for taking off his diaper when no one was looking. He did this by pressing the button for his brother and “I need help with the potty” over and over again until my wife paid attention.

2. Tell us that he wanted his grandmother and grandfather to come back to visit by pressing their tiles plus “again” and “more.”

3. Successfully negotiated that he needed to eat two more French fries in order to get one ice cream cone at Chic-fil-A. We did this in the tile translation mode by just saying those words over and over again. Basically, we talk and he sees a flashcard for each word we say. This was more or less impossible only a few weeks ago. The text the board functionality I made previously is useful but sucks at real time back and forth.

4. During a meltdown in the middle of Costco, which the guy at the register remembered the next time we came back because it was so bad, when asked why he was so upset he navigated to the emotion board all on his own and hit “nervous.” Then when we got to the van and he had settled down I asked him how he felt and again, all on his own without me intervening, he self-navigated to the emotion board and hit “embarrassed.” Which is the only time I’ve cried in front of him during this whole thing but I hugged him quickly so he wouldn’t see.

5. He only eats a few types of food, including candy, but in the last month he has eaten: multiple waffles, pieces of pineapple, a donut, and expressed an extreme interest in corn on the cob which we are trying out today.

6. The straps of his car seat were hurting him and he hit he tiles for “hurt” and “help me” over and over again until we pulled over and fixed it. We wouldn’t have even known why he was upset until we got home.

7. Told his mother he wanted a “Sea Animal Puzzle” that he plays with at therapy for our home.

8. Argues with his mother about snacks versus meals, insisting that he should be able to have corn nuts when his mother is attempting to give him other food. They resolved this when she pressed “nachos” and he stopped and also pressed “nachos” plus “I want that” and “yes please.”

9. All asks for toys, food, movies and shows, now come through the device so routinely it’s like we never lived in a world where we didn’t know what he wanted. We never ever knew what any of these desires were before two months ago.

I am extremely exhausted. I feel like one of those dam overflow pipes that gets opened up to just spew forth massive amounts of water. Work is nuts and this is app build is also nuts. There’s a whole series of stuff my son never sees that I use to make this all work in the background. My in-laws came over yesterday and my wife showed them the board. They asked where we got it and I realized I just started spewing system requirements at them for like fifteen minutes. These are not people who are more than a little aware that AI exists. It was so weird and esoteric they hadn’t even realized I built the app from anything I said. They were already pretty emotional to see my son communicating but when my brother-in-law realized I had actually made it and it wasn’t something we had bought he started crying. Crying crying crying, all over lately. But some crying is good.

At Costco, again in front of the same cashier he freaked out on last week, he shouted with his own voice, “Mama! Look! A white dove!” Which as a Christian felt like a miracle even when we realized he was pointing at a display of dove bar soap. Last night as I was putting him to bed his youngest brother came in and said, “Night” to which he responded, “I love brother.”

To me, a miracle is not a violation of nature. Nature cannot be violated because God’s nature is natural to himself. A miracle is more like a coalescence of purpose. Events shift in just the right way, like a sunbeam through clouds on an overcast day, and you can see the higher purpose in things made manifest. That’s a miracle. What is happening for my eldest son right now and our family is a miracle. It doesn’t matter that I can explain it anymore than it matters that I can explain away a sunbeam by muttering something about nuclear fission and atmospheric currents.

I can’t let myself indulge in tears too much, especially in front of my son, because when you feel a fish bite the line you put your whole focus on the reel. So that’s where I’m at with it. My eldest son’s speech capabilities have taken the bait and my whole focus is on the reel making sure I can bring in the fish. I know not every kid or parent will have this experience but we are and even if this is only bringing forward capabilities he might have acquired later it’s worth every stolen moment of sleep.

I know everyone is freaked out about the future and AI but this is a good thing. It’s a good thing I couldn’t have done without Claude Code. In my own understanding of what I’m doing when I use these tools, I am binding angels out of the ether to make manifest the cause of the good. Instead of being a crazy hermit drawing white runes on a cave wall I’m a tired dad talking to a text to speech model while driving. (I can’t compose quality story telling while driving, I’ve tried) But there’s no reason the future can’t be like this across the board. Just find a worthy vision, reach for the good, and use AI to help you attain it. We all get in a say in our own destiny. The future can be great if you show up and work.

What I need help with: so far I have only tested this with one other kid. If you know someone with a kid who could benefit from this please leave a comment below. Depending on the child’s needs I’ll need about $5-$100 to offset API costs for the image generation. I will only accept payment if the parent is happy with the product. I am especially looking for non verbal children who may not have a baseline appearance that is not easily modeled. I am looking to launch this in both the android and apple app stores in the next two weeks but I need some parents to help me test things out.

Also God bless America where I can do all this for a few thousand dollars in set up costs.

If you’re interested in beta testing a custom communication device for a non verbal child here is what I’m looking for:

1. You are the parent or guardian of a non verbal child who has at least one animated television show they usually pay attention to. If there is some other live action show with an aesthetic they pay attention to I can work with that but getting quality images on that is more expensive. I’ll charge as close to my out of pocket costs as I can but that can just get costly. Animation styles take first priority.

2. You are ready, willing, and able to tell me when something doesn’t work. It should be pretty clean but I’m still finding random weird pronunciations and I’m trying to give people lots of voice customization. Other than that you’ll be testing billing functionality and make sure I’m charging the right amount of money that I don’t accidentally blow up my life’s savings. The goal is that this should be wildly superior to any other device you’ve ever used to get your child to communicate.

3. You have at least some willingness to share data with me about how well your child is doing. Both by anecdote and the user data your child will generate. Think of me as a software tailor. Happy to add customizations that would help many children.

4. I am not ready for children with hearing impairments but they may get some limited use from the app. For full functionality I need enough running profit to pay someone who knows sign language to confirm my default sign language set is actually correct. I have the same basic blocker with non English languages.

5. I don’t have gaze control and probably won’t for several months if your child has motor control issues. I’ve done enough preliminary research to know that I can eventually do this.

6. If your child grasps language just fine or doesn’t have an impairment I don’t recommend what I’m doing. This is for children who are struggling to abstract right now. Eventually I’ll expand vocabulary and display for adults with the same issues. But I don’t want to find out a neurotypical child used this and it delayed their spoken language development because they learned to button mash instead.

7. I can take on about ten or twenty kids at this stage. If you know someone send them my way. Communication will be done primarily by email.