My daughter was nonverbal until she was 4. She would occasionally make sounds similar to words. One day I was home from work on lunch break, I worked 5 minutes away and would come home for lunch to save money.
I was leaving to head back to work, kissed my wife and then my daughter who was sitting in a high chair also having lunch. I told her "bye, I love you!".
She replied with a crystal clear perfect "I love you" back.
The reaction from my wife and I was similar to this mom. Hearing her speak at all, let alone telling me she loves me, is one of my strongest memories now. I remember it often and this video brought back all the emotions.
That's actually not unheard of, for a younger sibling to have delayed speech due to an older sibling acting as mouthpiece. A big motivation for speech is to get what you need/want- why speak when big sib does it for you? :)
Ok this explains a lot, my younger brother was tested a bunch (we didn't really has much knowledge of autism in my country during the 90s but my parents tried) for being non verbal we are 2 years apart in age and he didn't speak until he was almost 4.
Years later I was the one diagnosed to be neuro divergent but that's a different story :p
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u/mistiry 16d ago
My daughter was nonverbal until she was 4. She would occasionally make sounds similar to words. One day I was home from work on lunch break, I worked 5 minutes away and would come home for lunch to save money.
I was leaving to head back to work, kissed my wife and then my daughter who was sitting in a high chair also having lunch. I told her "bye, I love you!".
She replied with a crystal clear perfect "I love you" back.
The reaction from my wife and I was similar to this mom. Hearing her speak at all, let alone telling me she loves me, is one of my strongest memories now. I remember it often and this video brought back all the emotions.