Surviving Autism

My daughter can’t talk yet. She is considered as a non-verbal autistic by professionals. She babble words and can pronounce all the letters of the alphabet but she find it difficult to imitate words when you try ask her to say as you say.

I brought her to a speech pathologist so they can assess how she fares with her communication skills and probably get a recommendation to start her speech therapy. The pathologist said she still finds it difficult to manipulate her vocal cords and tongue to produce the right sounds, although she babble sounds and words and letters she doesn’t have the ability to coordinate her tongue, mouth, lips, vocal cords to produce the sound suited for a word.

According to the pathologist we can start training her vocalization by training her to drink through a straw. As this will help her control her lips, tongue and breathing as she sip the liquid from the straw.

For now our means of communicating is via hand-gestures but not really sign language as she is not deaf. She can understand whatever we tell her but sometimes she gets confused on complicated or multiple commands.