With the introduction of signing, I was feeling encouraged by E’s progress. He mastered signs fairly easily. He even seemed to enjoy it. He learned the sign for “go”, “play”, “help”, and “frog” His vocabulary grew each week. During therapy E would sit at the top of his little indoor slide and we would say, “Ready, Set,” and then he would sign “go”as he slid down. There was so much joy on his face. It was all great fun.
His most used sign quickly became the sign for “help”. As you can see its a bit harder than some. However, since E’s goal was to communicate with us, and not speak to the deaf, well we didn’t really care if it was officially correct. E’s version was that basically praying hands with an upward motion. Many kids when learning to talk use baby talk for items or modified words, so we just applied the concept to sign.
Along with the sign our goal as parents was to get E to voice some sounds. The speech therapist at the time, worked on animal noises and common children’s songs. The therapist sings a part of the song and then leaves a part blank. Most children feel compelled to fill in the blanks. Most, but well, not mine. I think E heard “Wheels on the Bus” so many times he still hates it to this day. E is also not a big fan of “Old McDonald’.
We did get something out of E. We got a whisper. Rarely was it an entire word. We’d get the whisper of a beginning sound of a word. I’d get a whispered b for bubbles. Then every once in a while a whispered word. Then as quickly as I heard the whispered word, it would go away. In fact, I would look at others just to make sure I didn’t hear what I wanted to hear. It was a strange whispered world and nothing was consistent.
My house was still too quiet