Communication foundations

I loved your post about foundations today @jonathanclery and it made me think of Coraline.

She doesn’t use sign language to tell us if she’s hungry or thirsty and she’s not yet talking. I think we generally anticipate her needs so she hasn’t needed to. In the new house we moved to in July Coraline doesn’t venture into the kitchen ever and we don’t tend to bring her in there.

I loved it when twice this week she crawled to the kitchen and sat in the middle of the floor. We knew she was telling us she was after something to eat or drink. That felt really exciting. She was communicating!

I guess it made me think, all the flash cards, all the careful use of single words, all the sign language, it was building all along, to moments like this where she could show us what she wanted.

(Pig jumper from grandpa. Whilst Coraline doesn’t talk, she loves making the noise of a pig currently when she sees one in a book or on T.V. Animal sounds are something we worked on with her speech therapists. It’s all going in). #downsyndrome #threeyearsold