Communicating

Maybe it's ironic that I am writing about this after my last post in which I wrote about my worries about Maddy's speech. But even though Maddy is still not speaking, in the last couple of weeks, she has made tremendous progress at communicating.

For the last few months, Maddy has been a bit of a handful - she knows what she wants but has not been able to let us know, so instead she will whine, or cry, or have an all-out tantrum. I've thought for a while that it is probably due to frustration, and now I am sure of it. 

In the past couple of weeks, Maddy has been getting better and better at answering yes/no questions by nodding or shaking her head. There are some questions that she definitely understands - "Do you want to go to bed?" "Are you hungry?" "Do you want your dummy?" (dummy is what we call her pacifier). Others we have to gesture - "Do you want this? (show her one item at a time)". Lately, when she starts to whine, we immediately start asking her what she wants and she stops whining and answers "yes" or "no" (as long as we don't take too long to guess!!). This has made a HUGE difference in the number of tantrums in our house, and we are all much happier for it!! 

It is amazing to see our little girl wanting to communicate and getting better and better at it. It takes a lot of practice and patience to understand her, but it is so worth it. Like everything else, when Maddy can't do something the conventional way, she figures out something else that works for her and she gets the job done. And even though Maddy's speech may be behind, I'm glad that we're finally starting to understand how to communicate with her :)