Yesterday, my mom and I decided to take the girls to the zoo. It’s beginning to warm up but it’s not too hot or too cool. The kids were all in school so we just about had the zoo to ourselves which was very stimulating for all of us. Since the SLP gave her us another term to her diagnosis, echolia. Which basically means in regards to her receptive language delay, she doesn’t know how to process responding to a demand or much of anything, so her best way to respond is to imitate what she just heard, answering a question with the same question. I had read about this before but I kind of wanted to stop putting labels on her complications. So this day was very much needed. Harmonee loves this app on her iPad that names all kinds of animals with pictures and the animal sounds and I notice how she will spot out any of her favorites in real life. So I really expected this experience to be very interesting.
Just as I expected she named a few of her favorite animals when we asked “what’s that?” . *sigh* the sweet sound of her voice I just wish I could hear so much more. Don’t get me wrong, I am truly grateful that she can expressively say a lot more but communication still takes a whole lot more to accomplish. Her receptive communication is our biggest setback. We still have to do hand-over-hand and walking her through things but sometimes it just doesn’t really stick as much as we would like it to. Some things that I get emotional about is the fact that she can name a lot of things but if we ask her to show us or point to something that she knows by name, she still wouldn’t have any clue what we are asking her to do. I can’t to her like I can talk to her 3 months older cousin about why she can’t do something because she may get hurt and other things that you can actually have a conversation about. She has 3 kids in her class that are always trying to hold a conversation with me when we come in and it just melts my soul that I can’t talk like that with my own daughter. The zoo really made a bittersweet moment for us, despite of the lack in communication I was absolutely blown away at how interested she AND her 10 month old sister were. At that age Harmonee was not as attentative or easy to please at all, but I’m so thankful for seeing so much growth on this day! To watch the full video of this beautiful day visit A Day at the Zoo !!
iAutism for her 