Zero Words but she can Sing

Lately Lauren has been singing! She has  zero real words but she can sing in tune to over a dozen songs using "ma", "ah",a little "ba", and other sounds. Its quite amazing as she picks up on the tunes of new songs quite quickly and is able to sing the song back in tune and with the right intonations. Lauren often sings while in the car and playing. Her favourite songs to sing to are Old McDonald, Five Little Ducks, Wheels on the Bus and Happy BIrthday. I've even heard Laren sing along to a classical piece from one of her toys and Glad You Came by The Wanted. Its interesting how she can so quickly imitate a tune but when it comes to motor actions, it takes so much more effort and practice. Her love for music come from multiple sources. Lauren is in music therapy and Kindermusick classes once a week and Kayla is often singing around the house too.

Last week Lauren's SLP said she heard Lauren say "Lauren" while looking at herself in the mirror and "no" when responding to a question yesterday. I am in complete shock and disbelief - but then again, we heard Lauren say "hammer" and "banana" several several months ago and those words never came back. Often we will hear her say a word once in therapy and it never repeats itself.So I guess we will have to wait and see what happens.

In the meantime we continue to use PECs as Lauren's main form of communication. Her school has incorporated PECs into snack times and is working on incorporating it into her activity time. At home, we continue to introduce new cards and she is learning them well. Of course, I keep going back to the old cards and testing her just to make sure she hasn't forgotten them! We have now about 10 food cards and a few toy cards. Her favourite card is raisins (you can see how its so worn). The cards in the first picture are ours, and the cards in the second picture are the ones the school uses.

I've been leaving the PEC book in the same place in our house so Lauren knows where to go. Lauren will spontaneously go and grab the PEC card and bring it to us indicating what she wants. She pulls the card off the velcro and will yell loudly "mamamamma", calling for my attention, while running to me with the card. Of course I always make her go the extra mile, so sometimes I'll simply open the pantry or fridge and then ask her to point out the item she has on her card. I know she must hate me sometimes...so much work to get one little box of raisins!

I've noticed lately that Lauren is doing more shared and joint attention. She is often looking at me with more meaningful looks and glances and trying to get my attention to show me something. Since school started she has been pointing a lot more and using her point as a way of showing me something, which is fantastic. The other day she tugged at my pants while I was washing the dishes and then pointed to her socks. I asked if she wanted to take off her socks, and of course got no reply (so assumed yes since she had pointed to them), and told her to sit down and take them off and sure enough, she did just that. When I took her to Kindermusick class for the first time (Steve usually takes her), she entered the music room and kept pointing to the shakers on the shelf and kept looking at me and looking at the shaker - great joint attention!