It was the one thing I was most concerned about when Emily was firstborn, her speech. I am a talker, always have been, always will be...my apologies go out to my wonderful family and friends who are such gracious listeners (or more than likely have gotten really good at pretending). My anxiety about her speech was extremely high, I was obsessive about talking to her all.the.time, hoping that she was listening even though she was just a newborn baby. I prayed over and over each and every day for her speech and begged God to allow us to have beautiful mother and daughter conversations some day. I have pursued speech therapy opportunities for her much more often than I have physical therapy and occupational therapy even though we take part in all three disciplines. My heart tells me that if she can communicate, then nothing can stop her from accomplishing her dreams.
I have been asked by many people to write about Emily's speech, but I haven't really wanted to write about it. For many reasons I have avoided the topic, mostly because I know that for a child with down syndrome her speech is above where it should be for someone at her age. And while I feel so incredibly excited and blessed that she is doing so well in this area, I also never want it to seem like I believe this is because we are doing things with her that other parents are not doing with their children or that somehow the way we parent her is superior...because it's not. Speech is a big thing in our amazingly close-knit community of parents who have children with down syndrome and I would never want to imply that her current level of speech is because of something we did or something they did not do. But I am willing to write about it now and hope that you find this post useful and encouraging...as it is meant as such.
As time has gone by, I have seen little glimmers of hope from Emily when it comes to speech. As an infant she cooed right about the time she was supposed to. On top of that, at her first pediatrician's appointment we were told that Emily's ear canals were not nearly as small as most infants with down syndrome and that continues to be the case as she has grown. At one year old, Emily said her first word - it was "uh-oh", I can't tell you how excited we were! Emily had a wonderful ENT who recommended tubes when she was 16 months old because she did have a lot of waxy buildup in her ears and he didn't want that to impede her progress. We did encourage Emily to sign but then noticed that as soon as she could say the word, she would drop the sign. Emily continued to add words steadily, although not as quickly as a typical child...but she could communicate and I was thrilled!
At 2 years old, Emily had about 50 words in her vocabulary and was starting to put two words together. By the time Emily was 3 years old, she was using many two words phrases and starting to add a 3rd word and had over 100 spoken words in her vocabulary. I have since lost track of the number of words she can speak as we are now concentrating on intelligibility. We have actually gone back to using some of our signs with her to encourage her to slow down a bit, and it does help because having to speak and sign slows her down and encourages her to recognize each word as a separate entity instead of running them all together.
I have been asked many times what we did to encourage Emily's speech and I have many answers to this question. First, it was my prayer and I believe God answered it according to his will and purpose for her. Secondly, Emily did not have apraxia which is common in down syndrome and makes speech more of a challenge for these children...though they do end up progressing amazingly well too, they just have another hurdle to jump that Emily didn't. Lastly, as I said before...I am a talker... and so is my firstborn son. Emily is constantly being talked to, asked questions and expected to respond in some way. We speak to her the same way we speak to our other children and ask her the same questions and engage her in the same ways. She has understood from a very early age that she is expected to respond when spoken to whether by sign or spoken word.
Every human being has the desire to communicate and our children are no different. They progress at different rates just like typical children do. So, when I get frustrated that Emily and I still cannot communicate the way Ethan and I could when he was 3, I remember that just as much as I desire communication with her, she wants it even more than I do. Emily wants to be understood, she wants to express her opinion and make requests of others. No matter where your child with down syndrome is in their speech progression, remember this desire to communicate and know that language will come... and one day you might wish they would just be silent for just a little bit.
I tried to capture Emily's speech a few times, and I never did get a really good video because her spontaneous speech is so much better than when I am asking her to answer specific questions, we are working on this and hopefully one day I can catch her in action on hidden camera :-)
