Comunication Update

Today we went to Speech Screening. We had an appointment with a very kind and professional speech pathologist this morning to set out a game plan regarding Natalia’s communication development.

2 weeks ago, when we had her 1 year developmental evaluation, she was at a 3 month level in her communication skills, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. Let me say this: Nati gets her point across with Aaa’s in many intonations and I certainly understand her. But now we are going to start coaching her to use some consonants, i.e.: Babababa, Dadadada, Mamamama, Tatatata… you get the picture. We’re supposed to make these noises very interesting and look at her directly to get her attention; I prefer to talk to her with real words and must confess I feel a little silly doing this but suppose that I’ll get used to it. Our goal is to get her to respond to us after a pause.

As we suspected, Nati's not going to start speech therapy yet, but will be having follow-ups with the speech pathologist every 3 months to evaluate her communication skills and be able to start speech therapy as soon as she is ready.

I asked the speech pathologist for tips for raising a bilingual baby, she had some interesting things to say: Babies relate language with people, so as long as the same person ALWAYS talk to her in the same language her brain can sort out that info and learn to speak and understand both languages. Now this is very important to Natalia because our home is bilingual and we would like her to understand both languages. Between her caretakers, friends and family and media she’s bombarded with both English and Spanish, so now I plan to talk to all the bilingual speakers and ask them to choose: English or Spanish, but stick with it. Hope that helps Nati in the long run….

Here's Grandpa using Natalia's favorite kind of non verbal comunication: goofing around.