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.
My son had his own gibberish language and he would point and grunt at what he wanted. When he got to be about 5 we started pushing him to use words.
We would delay getting what he wanted unless he used words and it worked far better than we ever imagined.
We would never let it go on too long, for example instead of getting a snack in 30 seconds after grunting and pointing at it, we would keep telling him he needed to use his words if he wanted something and make it so it took 3-5 minutes if he didn’t.
This little bit of hassle got him to quickly pick up speech and after about 4-5 months he was using complete sentences and after maybe a year he was speaking pretty much like anyone else save for the fact that he would always use words far beyond his age range and speak overly technical.
Autistic children are all different so what worked for mine may not work for everyone but keep trying things, you never know what may be the key to unlocking their communication abilities. Also don’t get discouraged if they don’t ever pick it up, not every person on the spectrum is able to communicate verbally even as adults.
Thanks for sharing your experience :) She is 9 now and although she still has challenges, she's now essentially on par with peers her own age. It just took her a different path to get there than most other kids is all.
13.3k
u/mistiry 18d 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.