It is known that Vanessa cannot talk. Even at 2 and a half years old, her vocabulary consists of about 5 words.
If you are lucky.
Every single day I get frustrated with her because she wants something, I don’t know what she is saying, she cries and whines and yells at me, I kind of snap back, she gets pissed more.
Rinse.
Repeat.
Daily.
Since she has gotten a new speech therapist because her old one went on maternity leave, her new therapist is really pushing her to just do letter sounds.
So, whenever she is in a good mood (which is not often), I try to squeeze some letter sounds out of her too. Along with trying to get her to say a few words. Sometimes we win. Sometimes we loose.
Mostly Loose. But Whatever.
A few weeks ago, I was laying in my bed with Vanessa and I was having her do her letter sounds. I would do a sound, she would repeat, and so on. Then I switched to animal sounds. She will only do a few such as cat (ow), dog (more of a huh huh for woof woof), cow (oo), bird (wee wee), duck (ack ack), and just within the last few days owl (oo oo). If you have a child with apraxia of speech, you know this is a BIG DEAL.
So then I decided to switch to some basic words. I don’t recall exactly what I was trying to get her to say but I do remember that I asked her to say something and she broke out crying. I asked her “Vanessa, what is wrong?” She gave me some baby mumbo jumbo. I told her “Vanessa, mommy does not know what you are saying. You need to use your words.” She gave me more mumbo jumbo like she was yelling at me and continued to cry. So I then said, “Vanessa, are you sad?” She shook her head no. “Vanessa are you mad?” She shook her head yes. I asked her “why?” More mumbo Jumbo.
Then I said, “Vanessa are you mad because you can’t talk to mommy and mommy doesn’t understand what you are saying?”
Vanessa looked at me with those big blue eyes full of crocodile tears, shook her head yes while saying “uh huh” and proceeded to cry HARD sobs.
All I could say was “Oh Baby!” and hug her and cry big crocodile tears of my own into her blonde hair while my heart shattered into a gazillion pieces.
I had no words for her because I know she is frustrated. I see it every.single.day. But how do I comfort her. All I can do is hug her and tell her it will be ok. But how does she know it will be ok? All she knows is mom cant understand. WHY CANT MOM UNDERSTAND?
My sweet girl. I cannot wait for the day that you are talking my ear off. Hopefully it is sooner rather than later.
Every once in awhile I feel like she says a word, but at the same time, I think I am hearing things. So in 6 months, we want her to be able to vocally say 10 words, be able to imitate 3-5 animal sounds, and point to body parts on a doll. I guess identifying body parts on a doll is harder than on yourself. *shrug* I dont know.
